The names of those to play both cricket and football for England conjure up the feeling of a very different era: cigarette cards, blazers and the faint whiff of Brylcreem.<\/p>\n
Sporting greats of a bygone time such as Denis Compton, CB Fry and Tip Foster are among the 12 men to do it. <\/p>\n
Arthur Milton was the last man when he played the first of six Tests in 1958 – seven years after he won his solitary England football cap against Austria.<\/p>\n
Another on the verge of joining that pantheon is of a more recent vintage in the form of goalkeeper Nigel Martyn. <\/p>\n
Well, kind of…<\/p>\n
Martyn, capped 23 times by the Three Lions in football, has forced his way into the reckoning for the England Over-60s cricket team after returning to a sport he has always loved.<\/p>\n
He might be a little greyer at the temples, but the prospect of becoming a dual international this summer has nevertheless stirred something in him.<\/p>\n
“It’s pretty special,” Martyn told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n
“Obviously as a professional goalkeeper I wasn’t allowed to play cricket in the summer, as it would threaten breaking fingers and things like that.<\/p>\n
“I retired with a stress fracture on my ankle so I didn’t think I was able to play cricket again. But I got the all-clear to do it in about 2011 so I started playing again.”<\/p>\n
Martyn got his professional football break for Bristol Rovers in 1987 after being recommended to their then manager Gerry Francis by the club’s tea lady Vi Harris.<\/p>\n
The Cornishman later played for Crystal Palace, Leeds and Everton, making 666 league appearances before he retired in 2006.<\/p>\n
Martyn still plays club cricket and is currently with Scarcroft CC, just outside Leeds. <\/p>\n
A few years ago he helped Knaresborough CC reach the North Yorkshire Premier Division alongside fellow ex-England goalie Paul Robinson.<\/p>\n
St Austell-born Martyn’s road to the international fold came off the back of county age-group matches for Cornwall – which necessitate a 800-mile round trip for matches from his Yorkshire home.<\/p>\n
“My good friend Sean Hooper, who was the captain of Cornwall Over-50s, spoke to me about six years ago asking if fancied playing for Cornwall,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We last played when we were together with Cornwall Schools Under-15s. From there Cornwall recommended me to England.<\/p>\n
“It’s a long trip but being able to go home and see family more often was always the added bonus with it as well.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The names of those to play both cricket and football for England conjure up the feeling of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-443215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}