5 most entertaining cricketers who also excelled at other sports

There aren’t many players around the world who have excelled in more than one sport. Every Cricket fan by now would have known that AB de Villiers was good enough to play Golf, Rugby, Badminton, Tennis and Hockey. He wasn’t the only one though. He had a set of predecessors who could have equally done well in other sports (on a global level) if they had not taken up Cricket. Here are they:

Denis Compton

Compton won the FA Cup with Arsenal

Very rarely does a batsman come who not only throws the rule book out of the window but also establishes himself as an antithesis of many-a-dour stereotypes that continue to fortify the sport to date. Denis Charles Compton from England was one such player. His un-English like flamboyance and an uncanny habit of manufacturing strokes outside the textbook earned him many accolades during his playing days. Not a technical purist, Denis based his game primarily on innovative stroke making bypassing the convention whenever an opportunity presented itself and yet, when the need arose, his defence was as orthodox as any other player playing the game at that time.

However, he fancied playing the sweep shot against the ball that straightened on the middle stump and those who have watched him bat say that he deployed different varieties of it even. An obvious proclivity for risk became his modus operandi and he seemed to revel in that kind of style. One of his captains, John Warr, summed up his unique batting technique when he suggested that Denis had clearly “read the textbook upside down”.

He was duly rewarded for his consistently good show in the international circuit when he was selected to play against Bradman’s Australia in 1938. Compton’s uninhibited talent was on display as he scored a fluent hundred in the high-scoring draw at Trent Bridge. He ended the series with modest figures of 214 runs at 42.80 and was later adjudged the “Wisden Cricketer of the Year” in 1939 for his stellar outings with bat and the ball.

However, much like other cricketers of his time, Compton lost many years of his career to the World War. But once the war ended; his form reached its pinnacle. He ended his illustrious Test career with 78 matches under his belt, scoring 5807 runs at a healthy average of 50.06 with 17 centuries.

Apart from cricket, Compton was also a keen player of Football and played for Arsenal (also a FA cup winner in 1950) and also represented England during wartime international matches. For a man of his talent, Compton’s true genius lay in the manner he played the sport and the entertainment he provided to his fans and peers.

Charles Fry

Fry was another cricketer who excelled in Football

Late John Arlott, an English journalist and a cricket commentator for BBC called C.B. Fry the ‘most variously gifted Englishman of any age’ and if one were to look into Fry’s past, you would know just why. A man of many talents, he equalled the world record in long jump, played rugby for the barbarians and even appeared in the 1902 F.A. Cup Final, but for now we shall only focus on his exploits on the cricket field. He scored 30886 first-class runs from 394 matches at an average of 50.22 and to top it all, the 94 first-class hundreds- six of these hundreds were made in successive innings, a feat matched only by the great Sir Donald Bradman and Mike Proctor. That Fry scored those hundreds on uncovered, Victorian-age pitches is a testimony to his batting prowess.

He played a total of 26 Test matches for England averaging a tad over 32 and captained the team in his last six games (Triangular series against South Africa and Australia in 1912). England did not lose a single match under Fry’s captaincy although; his exploits in first-class cricket were much more discussed where his average was bettered only by his close friend and another great cricketer- Ranjitsinhji. Fry and Ranjitsinhji were not only friends off-the field but on it as well. Both these batsmen were involved in one of the most memorable of partnerships both for Sussex and England and it is said that they played an instrumental role in changing the game of cricket in that day and age.

Cricket may have been just a side-bar to Fry’s prominent career but it gives us an insight into the life of a player who could do absolutely anything absolutely brilliantly.

Jonty Rhodes

Rhodes was a top Hockey player

Apart from being one of the most electrifying fielder to have played the game, Jonty Rhodes was a pretty handy batsman in a South African side filled with batting stalwarts. Rhodes made his Test debut against India in the first Test of the “Friendship Tour” at Durban in November, 1992 and made modest scores of 41 and 26 in the two innings. He went on to play 52 Test matches for South Africa in which he scored 2532 runs at an average of 35.66 with three centuries and 17 half centuries.

His ODI career spanned for a longer period as he went on to play 245 limited overs internationals in which he scored 5935 runs at an average of 35.11 with two centuries and 33 half centuries.

His greatest contribution to cricket though was his acrobatic and agile fielding at backward-point position. The image of a flying Jonty Rhodes breaking the stumps of Inzamam-ul-Haq is etched forever in the mind of every cricket fan. He took a total of 34 catches in the 52 Tests that he played and 105 catches from 245 ODIs.

Rhodes was also a highly accomplished Hockey player who won several international caps and was part of the South African team that tried to qualify for the 1992 Olympic games in Barcelona. He also took part in the trials for 1996 Olympics but failed to make it to the final squad because of injury. Clearly, he was a true all-rounder in the truest sense of the word.

Jeff Wilson

Jeff Wilson in action

In his relatively short career for New Zealand, Jeff Wilson played a total of 6 ODIs and scored 103 runs at an average of 20.60 and also took 4 wickets at an economy of 6.44. His highest score of 44 came in only 28 balls and helped New Zealand beat Australia in an ODI match at Hamilton. Although he made his debut in March, 1993, after a fairly long hiatus from international cricket (12 years), he came back to play two ODIs, again against Australia but did very little to leave an impression.

But during the time he wasn’t playing cricket, he was busy carving an impression in rugby union where he won 60 caps for the All Blacks and scored 44 times which was a record at that time.

First capped in cricket as a nineteen-year old, he made an impression as a busy and handy all-rounder. Again, given his exploits outside the cricket field, he truly was an all-round talent.

Franklyn Stephenson

Franklyn sadly didn’t play Test cricket for the Windies

Franklyn Stephenson never played a Test match for the West Indies which becomes hard to digest after you are done glancing at his first-class numbers. Fathom this. A total of 219 first-class matches in which he scored 8622 runs at an average of 27.99 with 12 centuries and 43 half-centuries and he also took 792 wickets at an economy of 2.86. Many say that his choice of touring South Africa with the rebel sides of early 1980s meant that the selectors always turned a blind eye to his name at the time of selection.

However, at a time when the Windies were frightening their opponents world over with their express pace and marauding batting, another fine all-rounder would have just doubled the damage inflicted by the caribbean giants. After cricket, the tall and lanky fast bowler than turned to golf and had great success in that sport as well.