Former Manchester United and England midfielder Paul Scholes made a return to club cricket last year, having been prevented from playing the sport by Sir Alex Ferguson.
Scholes is an avid cricket fan and represented his local club Middleton as a youngster, before being forced to give it up after breaking into United's first-team. However, almost a decade after his second retirement from football in 2013, Scholes returned to the sport.
The 47-year-old represented Uppermill in Division One of the Greater Manchester Cricket League, playing alongside former Lancashire seamer Kyle Hogg. Speaking to the ECB Reporters Network, Hogg said: "Paul Scholes played all the T20s with us, and he was brilliant.
"He was an all-rounder who had played for Middleton up until he was 17. In fact, he'd actually made his United debut and played a game for Middleton after that. But Sir Alex Ferguson found out, so he had to finish.
"Before last year, he'd not played cricket for 20 years. But, when he went out to bat, he was looking around the field and quickly assessing where his scoring options were.
"I guess you could almost see the midfielder he was come through. He assessed things so quickly." Hogg added that Scholes suffered a groin injury while fielding one match and has not played for Uppermill this season.
Scholes is not the only member of the famed 'Class of '92' to have played cricket as a youngster, with Gary Neville notably sharing a 236-run partnership alongside future Australia opener Matthew Hayden for Greenmount Cricket Club as a 17-year-old.
Older brother Phil, however, was widely considered to be the better cricketer, with England legend Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff describing him as a "cricketing genius" and claiming he "could have been England’s Ricky Ponting or Sachin Tendulkar".
Speaking to talkSPORT in 2020, Flintoff said: "I played junior cricket at Lancashire with Phil Neville. He was a year older than me and he was a cricketing genius.
"If that lad would have carried on playing cricket he could have been England’s Ricky Ponting or Sachin Tendulkar, he was that good.
"He used to turn up, open the batting and score 100 every time and after that, he’d bowl everyone out! He was a quick bowler as well.
"He got offered a contract at Lancashire, it was something like two-and-a-half grand a year or go and play for Manchester United. Luckily he went to United, otherwise I might have ended up at Derbyshire or something."
