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Australian cricket captain Steve Waugh (left), and Vice Captain Shane Warne (right) display the World Cup Cricket trophy. Australia's 1 Day Cricket World Cup winning team drove in a motorcade down Sydney's main street to celebrate in a ticket tape parade with over 100,000 well wishers attending. AAP Photo/ Pablo Ramire
Following my recent post on international cricketers who played rugby, today I’ve listed Test cricketers who have proudly worn their country’s colours in football (soccer), hockey, tennis, baseball and badminton.
FOOTBALL
For England: CB Fry, Andy Ducat, RE ‘Tip’ Foster, Harry Makepeace, Hon. Alfred Lyttelton, Leslie Gay, Harold ‘Wally’ Hardinge, Albert Knight, Jack Arnold, William Gunn, Jack Sharp, Sir Charles Aubrey Smith, Willie Watson and Arthur Milton.
Foster captained England in both cricket and football. Watson represented England in the 1950 Soccer World Cup. Sir Charles Aubrey Smith later made a name for himself as a stage and movie actor.
For South Africa: Gordon White, John ‘Mick’ Commaille and Sid O’Lynn.
For New Zealand: Ken Hough represented New Zealand and Australia in football.
HOCKEY
For Australia: Brian Booth and Trevor Laughlin; Booth represented Australia in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
For South Africa: ‘Jonty’ Rhodes and Russell Endean.
For England and India: Nawab of Pataudi Sr.
For India: MJ Gopalan.
For New Zealand: Edwin McLeod and Keith Thomson.
For Zimbabwe: David Houghton.
TENNIS
For India: Cotar Ramaswami played Davis Cup.
BASEBALL
For Australia: Vic Richardson and Bruce Dooland.
Richardson, the grandfather of Ian, Greg and Trevor Chappell, besides shining for Australia in cricket and baseball, also represented South Australia in golf and tennis. He was prominent at lacrosse and basketball and was a first-rate swimmer.
BADMINTON
For New Zealand: Philip Horne.
Here are some additional tidbits:
* The legendary WG Grace was the national 440-yard hurdles champion and also represented England at bowls.
* England’s Ted Dexter played in the English Amateur Golf Championship.
* Alan Walker was a member of the Australian Wallabies Rugby Union team touring England Britain, France and USA in 1947-48 and the Australian cricket team to South Africa in 1949-50.
* Kepler Wessels was the top junior tennis player for South Africa in 1973.
* Steve and Mark Waugh had represented NSW at cricket, football and tennis when in their teens. They later played football at reserve level for Sydney club Croatia.
Although not an international, the daddy-of-all versatile sportsman was extrovert Bill Alley from New South Wales and Somerset.
He was a blacksmith’s striker, boilermaker, deep-sea fisherman, dance-hall bouncer, professional boxer, an aggressive left-handed batsman who scored 3019 runs for Somerset in 1961 aged 42 and went on to umpire ten cricket Test matches.
In 400 first-class matches for NSW, Somerset and Commonwealth XI from 1945 to 1968, he hit 19,612 runs at 31.88 with 31 centuries (top-score 221 not out). He also took 768 wickets at 22.68 and 293 catches.
Now with cricket going on almost twelve months a year, there has not been a cricketer who has represented his country in another sport in a decade.
But for cricket played all year round, Shane Warne – who knows – could have represented Australia in AFL.
And many cricketers, Ricky Ponting to give a recent example, would have played golf at an international level had it not been for a crowded cricket calendar.
This list of dual internationals is not complete; only an appetising entrée.
Sources: As in Part I, plus World Cricketers (Oxford, UK, 1996) by Christopher Martin-Jenkins and No-balls and Googlies (Callistemon Books, South Australia, 2006) by Geoff Tibballs.