Without the good fortune of having seen an England side lose games of cricket for almost an entire decade, I don’t think I could have fallen in love with sport. That run of defeats bred in me commitment to a doomed cause, a sporting value I held above all else. Certainly, above winning. Teams that won all the time, were, to my mind, slightly distasteful. Of that era, there were two in particular: the Australian cricket team that won everything going for 15 years and Manchester United. For me, they were one and the same.
Players from both of these decorated teams have taught me a humbling lesson in their post-career lives. It turns out that Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist, David Beckham, Paul Scholes et al are all three-dimensional, likeable and real human beings. When I meet Gary Neville at his very own Hotel Football overlooking Old Trafford, I put the similarity between the two teams to him. “That Australian side was everything I’d ever want in a sports side,” he says. “To me, they were the ultimate cricket team. Like us, they never knew when they were beat. The word I would use is uncompromising.”
Neville then reveals, somewhat bizarrely, that the link between the teams is closer than I imagined. “Did you know I had a partnership with Matt Hayden at club level, 200-odd?” What does he recall of it? “I’ll tell you what I remember, nearly losing the bastard game. I hit a bad shot, Hayden came up to me and said: ‘Concentrate, I don’t want any of that crap – this is not the time.’ That mentality of: ‘You don’t give your wicket away’. That was something I didn’t value enough. He did. Even then. He could actually just flick it off his legs for six, just glide it, and you’d be like: ‘Hang on a minute, how’s that ended up in the trees?’”
The brothers Neville. Illustration: James Husbands
Competitive spirit and resilience though, was far from an Australian epiphany; it was everywhere at his Lancashire club, Greenmount CC. “Cricket toughened me up in my early years a lot more than football. From a very young age, you’re playing against men. It was scary.” He leaps up to imitate backing up at the non-striker’s end. “When I was 14 I got Mankaded by a grown man. I’d say he was older than 40. I backed up, not concentrating. He stopped and warned me. I did it again without thinking. He clipped my bails off. It kicks off. My side came running over, ‘You’re a fucking disgrace’ and the rest of it.”
He settles back down in his chair. “At the time, I blamed him and thought it was unsporting. But actually, looking back at it now, it made me think: ‘I need to be smarter, shrewder, cuter.’ It’s a bit like diving for a penalty. Football fans hate diving. But, to dive, you’ve got to give someone the chance to dive. I take my responsibility. Cricket taught me a lot about adult sport.”
Harsh realities aside, the game also framed genuine generational togetherness. “A cricket club is a community. You’ve got the whole family there. Grandparents are watching, parents are playing, kids are on the field trying to learn about cricket. Cricket is a far better social sport than football.”
His brother Phil famously had a genuine decision to make between professional football or cricket. “He broke all of Atherton and Crawley’s records at school. He had patience that I didn’t. He could leave the ball outside off stump for days,” Gary says proudly.
Neville is a busy man but, before being whisked off to a meeting, he wants to re-assert his love for the purest form of cricket. “I’d rather watch six hours of Test cricket than six hours of T20 any day. If something’s not happening, sometimes it’s even better! To not make something happen for six hours is a talent.” And is there anything else this one-club man with with eight Premier League titles and two Champions League medals would like to experience in sport? “My dream is to go to an Ashes series in Australia. I’ve never been. One day I’ll ask for three weeks off…”
• This interview was published first in Wisden Cricket Monthly
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