Nigel Martyn. England footballer. England cricketer

AFC BournemouthArsenalAston VillaBrentfordBrighton & Hove AlbionBurnleyChelseaCrystal PalaceEvertonFulhamLeeds UnitedLiverpoolManchester CityManchester UnitedNewcastle UnitedNottingham ForestSunderlandTottenham HotspurWest Ham UnitedWolverhampton WanderersScores & ScheduleStandingsFantasyThe Athletic FC NewsletterPodcastsNigel Martyn. England footballer. England cricketerNigel Martyn training alongside England batsman Joe Root in 2017 Gareth Copley/Getty Images Share articleThe Athletic has launched a Cricket WhatsApp Channel. Click here to join. There was a time when some of the best English footballers and cricketers spent their ‘off-season’ playing the other national sport. The extraordinary Denis Compton was one of England’s great batters over two decades from the late 1930s to the late 50s but was good enough as a footballer to win the league and FA Cup as a winger with Arsenal. More recently, county cricketers such as Jim Cumbes, Chris Balderstone, Phil Neale and Arnie Sidebottom all played professional football at a time, in the 70s and 80s, when it was still possible to play both sports close to the highest level. Gary Lineker once missed a game for Spurs because of an injury sustained in a cricket match he was not supposed to be playing in, and Gary and Phil Neville are still considered the ones that got away by Lancashire because of their cricketing prowess. Now there is a new name to add to the list and one who is making his mark in a second sport at an age when most top players have long hung up their boots and bats. Nigel Martyn was a goalkeeper good enough to go to two World Cups with England, made 666 professional appearances, mostly at the top domestic level with Crystal Palace, Leeds and Everton, and was the first £1million goalkeeper in English football. But what is less widely known is that Martyn has long been an accomplished wicketkeeper-batter, both as a youngster when he played age-group cricket for Cornwall, and, since he retired from football, at a high level of Yorkshire club cricket. Now, approaching his 60th birthday, Martyn is close to becoming an ‘international’ again after his selection for the Lions, England’s second-string, at 60s level and is set to make his debut, perhaps appropriately, against old footballing rivals Scotland next Friday. “I got an email out of the blue asking me to go for a trial,” Martyn tells The Athletic. “I’ve been playing for Cornwall over 50s and because I turn 60 this year, the county recommended me. I didn’t know anything about it.” The trial at Loughborough University and an intra-squad day in Derbyshire last week went so well that Martyn, 24 years since he went to Japan and Korea for the 2002 World Cup and reached the quarter-finals under Sven-Goran Eriksson, was back in the international picture when England cricket seniors named their squad for the summer. “It’s a little bit later in life, but it’s still a big thrill,” says Martyn from his home in Yorkshire, where he lives following his days at Elland Road. “I love my sport and take it seriously, but I do have a laugh along the way. Seniors cricket is getting bigger and bigger, and the standards are high. All these guys I play with and against are incredibly fit and you have to remind yourself that many of them are 60-plus. “You’re not going to put your body through the pressure of playing at this level without having that commitment. Yes, I take it seriously as a former footballer but all these guys do too and I take my hat off to every single one of them. It’s great to be a part of.” 1st XI v 1st XI 1st XI 36/3 (10), 285 reqd off 40 ov 9.3: Giddings to Scott, OUT Tom Scott c Nigel Martyn b Toby Giddings 0 (2)https://t.co/SITg9fGuey pic.twitter.com/7SLPrRy72n — Knaresborough CC (@KnaresboroughCC) June 18, 2022 Martyn loved his cricket growing up in St Austell and played both sports at school. “I was always a wicketkeeper,” he says. “I wasn’t allowed to play in goal at school even though I wanted to because I was deemed to be more useful out on the pitch but I did keep wicket and diving around was something I enjoyed doing from a young age. “There are transferable skills, hand-eye coordination being one of them. You’re seeing a ball out of nowhere and you have to put your hands in the right place to stop them. If I’m not stood up to the stumps, I’m still able to dive around and am maybe able to get to those balls that are a bit wider or have come off the edge or the thigh pad because of football. “It does help being a goalkeeper but the technical side of wicketkeeping is something you have to learn as you’re going on. There are some good basic tools to work with being a goalkeeper that’s for sure, but I’m still learning to be a ’keeper even now.” It has been a cricketing journey that was put on hold when Martyn’s football career took off — it was then deemed too risky for him to play cricket — but began again four years after he retired in 2006. “I finished football when I had a stress fracture in my ankle and I didn’t think I could play sport again, but after a while I got pretty bored and felt I needed to get back doing something,” he says. “Then I got the all-clear to start playing cricket and I’ve enjoyed the last 15 years of doing it again. I’ve been at Knaresborough for the last six years and helped get them to the Yorkshire Premier division, so that’s as high as you can go at that level. “Then I had a friend message me in the winter asking if I would help him at Scarcroft to try to help them up through the leagues in the same way, so I’ve got a fresh challenge at club level this year as well as the seniors now with England.” So, was Martyn lost to cricket, like the Nevilles and Lineker, by the greater lure of football? “I don’t know if I was ever good enough to play cricket professionally when I was younger,” he says. “I had the athletic ability to dive around and stop the ball but technically at that time I would have needed a lot of work to make it my career. I did play Cornwall schools cricket, but I couldn’t get in the Cornwall schools football team, which is ironic. “The captain of my Cornwall schools team is now skipper of the Over 50s and he’s the guy who asked me to start playing for them again and that has led to the Lions call-up. “I still live in Yorkshire and a home game in Cornwall is an 800-mile round trip for me. I play cricket up here on Saturday, drive to Cornwall on a Monday, play the game on Wednesday and get back up in time for Saturday’s game. So I’m lucky that my wife is supportive of this, just as she was throughout my football career.” The old competitive juices that took him so far in football are still there. “I’m definitely as competitive as I used to be,” says Martyn. “Team sport is many cogs trying to make the machine work, so it’s about doing your job well while encouraging team-mates. “I get a lot of enjoyment watching other people do well and celebrating it with them. That’s part of the team environment that I have again.” And cricket has enabled Martyn to retain his fitness. “My daughter is a physio at Harlequins (the Premiership rugby union team) and keeps me on the straight and narrow,” he says. “When the cricket season finishes, I say, ‘Right, that’s it, I’m not going to the gym anymore’ but she’s immediately on at me and says, ‘You can’t yo-yo, your weight can’t go up and down. At your age, you have to keep doing it!’ So she keeps me going.” Martyn will be taking a big step towards becoming a ‘dual international’ when he takes to the field at Seaton Carew near Hartlepool to take on Scotland with the Lions but the ultimate goal is to play in another World Cup or perhaps ‘the grey Ashes’ against Australia. “There’s a World Cup being played in Canada in August, and my birthday falls during the tournament, so I’m not eligible to play a full senior game until I turn 60,” he says. “I’d only have been eligible for the later games, so I wasn’t really considered. But I have to say England have picked two very good wicketkeepers for the World Cup, so I don’t know if I’d have been picked even if my birthday was earlier. “It would be lovely to get to another World Cup but at this age you can’t look too far ahead!” says Martyn. “The feeling inside of me is to stay fit, strong and carry on enjoying it. “If there’s a World Cup further along the line, then who knows. But every guy in that squad still works extremely hard to make sure they’re good enough to be there. These guys are bloody good at what they do.” It would be quite an accomplishment after a football career that saw Martyn play in the 1990 FA Cup final for Palace and win 23 caps for his country, despite being around at a time when David Seaman made the England goalkeeping place his own. “I do look back with pride,” says Martyn. “My career is something that’s nice to look back on and it’s lovely to be able to go back to your old clubs and be held in high esteem by supporters. That connection is important. When I go back anywhere, it’s always only positive and that’s a nice feeling.” As would playing cricket for England. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms