Master of many: The ones who went beyond one sport
Today, we highlight some players who have gone significant lengths in more than one sport.
If you have played at the highest level of any sport, it means you have done something with your talents and thus come so far. But what if you achieved that in more than one sport?
Well, that would be some achievement. Over time, there have been athletes in different sports who have tried their hand (or feet) in sports other than the ones by which we know them.
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If we try to name everyone who has had a crack at some other sport beside their major one it would be a long list. So today, we highlight some players who have gone significant lengths in more than one sport.
Jahangir Shah Badshah
One of the pioneers of Bangladesh cricket, Jahangir Shah Badshah featured for the country's national side in the late 1970s and 1980s. But Badshah's credentials were not only stuck within cricket as he had started off his career as a footballer.
Badshah played as a left-back and won the league title for one of Bangladesh's most prestigious club Dhaka Abahani in 1974. But that was the year when his footballing adventures came to a close due to a knee injury while featuring in the Bangladesh team under the name 'Dhaka XI' while facing a Russian side.
He then went on to become one of the key members of the then Bangladesh cricket side. Badshah was a pace-bowling allrounder, a position where Bangladesh still lack today.
Badshah was a measly seamer with great accuracy and a dependable batsman in the lower-middle order. Badshah's greatest moment in cricket came after a three-day match against Pakistan where he picked up three wickets and scored 46 runs in Dhaka. After the match, Pakistan skipper Imran Khan, who was one of Badshah's scalps, gave him a warm applause for his performance.
Talking with The Business Standard (TBS), Badshah reminisced about his days in cricket. Bangladesh were close to qualifying for the 1979 World Cup but failed because of losing a match. He said, "We were not that professional back then and did not take the game as seriously as they do right now. We lost a crucial match and missed on our chance to qualify for the World Cup in 1979."
But Badshah also saw a silver lining in that cloud as he said, "Teams like Canada qualified for that World Cup but look at them now. That could have also happened with us. So, it might have been a good thing that we did not qualify for the World Cup."
Badshah never got the opportunity to play Test cricket as his cricketing career came to a close 10 years before Bangladesh received Test status.
Viv Richards
Viv Richards is known for his brutal force with the willow but did you know, he once featured for the Antigua national side in the qualifiers of the 1974 World Cup?
Richards is one of the greatest batsmen to ever play the game, scoring more than 15,000 runs in international cricket. He was the pioneer of the modern age aggressive batting and played crucial parts in Windies' World Cup glories in 1975 and 1979.
But before then, Richards was captaining both the Antigua cricket and football side. To cricket's gain, Antigua failed to qualify for the World Cup and Richards focused solely on cricket to become one of the greatest batsmen to ever grace the game.
Elysse Perry
Imagine being 16 and debuting for both the national football and cricket team. For many, it is a dream too good to be true. Well, for Elysse Perry it was not.
She became the youngest female cricketer to ever feature for Australia and she left football in 2010 for cricket, when she had to choose between the Asian Cup and the World T20 and chose the latter. She went on to win the tournament and also the 2013 Cricket World Cup later on.
Perry has till date eight Tests, 112 ODIs and 120 T20Is for Australia, scoring 4,864 runs and picking up 297 wickets.
Special mention: Steve Bucknor
While the others on this list are athletes, this one is for an umpire. Nicknamed 'The Slow Death', Steve Bucknor is one of cricket's most decorated umpire, officiating 128 Tests and 181 ODIs.
But Bucknor initially played football as a goalkeeper and then became a Fifa referee later on and also conducted a World Cup qualifier between El Salvador and the Netherlands Antilles in 1988. The next year he debuted as an international umpire when he officiated the match between Windies and India at Antigua.
