Three of the most unexpected teammates in sport
The Question of Sport Podcast always digs out strange stories from the world of sport. So when presenter Sam Quek's old GB hockey teammate Susannah Townsend appeared as a guest on the podcast, the team decided to pick out of the some slightly more unexpected teammates from sporting history.
1. Right-back Gary Neville and batter Matthew Hayden
As Question of Sport bossman Gareth Edwards points out, lots of cricketers from all over the world come to England in the British summer to play league cricket, especially young, up-and-comers from cricketing nations in the Southern hemisphere, like Australia.
In 1992, one such Aussie was then 21-year-old Matthew Hayden who came over to the UK to play local league cricket for a club called Greenmount, who were based in Bury in Lancashire.
Hayden would go on to become one of the great batters of all time, scoring 8625 test runs for Australia in an international career that spanned 15 years. His 380 against Zimbabwe in 2003 is still the second highest score in international test history.
But before all that, he scored 140 not out in a Greenmount victory against rivals Astley Bridge in a Bolton League match. That day he shared a partnership of 236 with a local 17-year-old lad called Gary Neville, who went on to have his own impressive career, although not in cricket.
Gary Neville contributed an impressive 110 not out that day but would, of course, go on to much greater success as Manchester United and England's first choice right-back for more than a decade. He actually made his Old Trafford debut the same year he turned out with Hayden for Greenmount.
2. Tennis ace Ashleigh Barty and cricketer Kate Cross
Long before she stunned the sporting world by announcing her retirement at the age of 25, reigning Wimbledon and Australian Open champion Ashleigh Barty had already stepped away from the world of tennis.
In 2014 at the age of 18, but already four years into her professional career, she stepped away from one sport and decided to pursue another.
Barty took up cricket and was so good that the next year she found herself appearing for the Brisbane Heat in the inaugural Women's Big Bash League Twenty20 season. One of her teammates in that competition was the England bowler Kate Cross, who was appearing as one of the Heat's two overseas players.
At that point Cross had already made her debut for England and she is still a regular in the international team today. She is also co-host of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 5 Live's cricket podcast No Balls alongside her former international teammate Alex Hartley.
Barty, on the other hand, returned to tennis in 2016 and made her own history. As well as the Wimbledon and Australian Open titles she currently holds, she took another Grand Slam title, the French Open, in 2019 and bows out of the game ranked world number one.
Watch out for what she does next.
3. Darts champion Gerwyn Price and rugby legend Alun Wyn Jones
It will come as no surprise that the Welsh Rugby Union team for the 2005 Under-21 World Cup in Argentina featured the then 19-year-old lock Alun Wyn Jones.
The future captain of Wales and the British Lions was only a year away from making his senior international debut and he has gone on become the world's most capped rugby union international of all time.
But another member of that young team has gone on to become a world number one in a very different sport altogether.
Gerwyn Price played his club rugby as a hooker for Neath at the time, but he is far better known now as a professional darts player. He quit rugby to concentrate on darts in 2014 and has never looked back.
Price became the darts World Champion in 2021, defeating Gary Anderson in the final at Alexandra Palace to become the first Welsh winner of the PDC World Championship.
And Price continues to surprise. He is now scheduled to try out yet another seeming unconnected sport: boxing.
