Footballers Who Played Cricket and Cricketers Who Made It Big in Football

From FIFA World Cup appearances to ICC Cricket World Cup glory, explore the rare athletes who competed at the highest level in both football and cricket, including Ellyse Perry, Clare Taylor, Viv Richards and more sporting legends.

Footballers Who Played Cricket and Cricketers Who Made It Big in Football (Image Source: Google)

The Three Lions skipper Harry Kane was recently seen leading his team’s cricket practice at his team’s FIFA World Cup training base in Florida. Not only this, MCC approves of football players’ technique with bat and ball, and the official lawmakers of the game commented on the English footballers’ cricket skills, ‘Technique straight from the MCC manual,’ on their official Instagram page. In the pre-tournament training camp at West Palm Beach in Florida, Harry Kane rolled his arm over with some sharp deliveries and also batted.

If footballers can play cricket, believe it, many cricketers have played football at the top level, even the FIFA World Cup. The first and most popular name on everyone’s list is Ellyse Perry of Australia, who is a two-time ICC Cricket World Cup winner and played for the Matilda (Australian football team), at the FIFA World Cup in 2011.

She is a multi-sport legend and, if we talk of football only, she played for Central Coast Mariners, Canberra United and Sydney FC during her footballing career and made 18 appearances for the Matilda and even scored Australia's only goal in the 1-3 defeat against Sweden in the quarter final at the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup. She is the last Australian to score a goal in a football World Cup.

Ellyse Perry would make it among the top sportspersons in the world just based on her cricketing accolades. It is generally believed that she is the only player ever to play in both ICC and FIFA World Cups, which is incorrect.

Clare Taylor’s achievement is no less. She was part of the 1993 cricket World Cup winning England team at Lord’s and two years later, in 1995, she played for England at the FIFA World Cup. Taylor is from Yorkshire and played her club football for Bronte and Liverpool Ladies.

Clare Taylor is the only player of either gender to have played for England in World Cups for both cricket and football. She represented the England women's football team at the 1995 FIFA Women's World Cup in Sweden, helping the team reach the quarterfinals.

In fact, Taylor preferred football to cricket, and she focused on cricket after being dropped from the England football team. She was allotted 82 when the FA announced their legacy numbers scheme to honour the 50th anniversary of England’s inaugural international. She was No. 1 in the ICC women's batting rankings that were released for the first time in October 2008.

Taylor was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2000 Birthday Honors ‘for services to Cricket, Association Football, and to Hockey.’

Sir Vivian Richards had greater success on the cricket field than he ever did on a football pitch. The West Indian legend occasionally turned out for the Antiguan national football team, and he played in their qualification campaign for the 1974 World Cup finals, but Antigua lost all four of their matches, including an 11-0 dismantling at the hands of Trinidad & Tobago and a 6-0 defeat to Surinam.

Believe it, Sir Geoff Hurst, scorer of the most famous hat-trick (the only one to score in a World Cup final) in the history of English football, to win the World Cup in 1966 at Wembley also played one County Championship game for Essex (against Lancashire) in 1962. He was an outstanding fielder, and occasional wicketkeeper, but couldn’t spare much time for cricket.

You will be surprised to note that Bobby Moore was also a very good cricketer, and it took the England cricket team until 2010 to win a World Cup, but these two English cricketers managed it 44 years earlier.

CB Fry and Denis Compton were more accomplished footballers, but the connection to the football World Cup eluded them. However, in the 1953 Ashes series, a player with the name of Willie Watson also played with Compton. Watson, who played 23 Tests, scored two Test hundreds and overall accumulated more than 25000 runs in first class cricket, was one of that very small select band who represented England at both cricket and football. He was in the English squad for the World Cup in Brazil in 1950 but did not play in a match, probably because he didn’t fit into the strategy of his manager.

This reference shall remain incomplete without the mention of one and only Steve Bucknor. This famous umpire did not officiate in a FIFA World Cup, but he made history as the first person to officiate in both Cricket and Football World Cup events. He was a FIFA-accredited football referee who notably officiated in World Cup qualifying matches.