FORMER Manchester United and England star Gary Neville has given a fascinating insight into his love of cricket and his teenage years as a Greenmount player.

Both Gary Neville and his younger brother Phil might have forged glittering careers as professional cricketers had they not been offered professional contracts at United.

Thirty-eight-year-old Gary has now become a highly-rated football pundit and was the BBC TMS lunchtime guest on the fourth day of play in the third Ashes Test at Old Trafford on Sunday.

A talented cricketer as a schoolboy, he played for Lancashire’s Under-14s team and for Bolton League side Greenmount, for whom he scored 110 not out in an unbroken partnership of 236 with Australian professional Matthew Hayden in a Hamer Cup tie against Astley Bridge in 1992.

“I loved playing cricket,” said Neville. “It was football in the winter and cricket in the summer. Me and my brother, we’d switch just like that.

“It toughened me up, cricket. As a 14-year-old at football we were playing against people of our own age, but in cricket we played in the first team for Greenmount, coming up against professional cricket in the league. It’s a harsh environment for a 14-year-old.”

Neville recalled being “dobbed” (run out at the bowler’s end while out of the the crease before the ball is bowled) by a wily pro when they were playing against Kearsley.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Neville. “Dobbing isn’t in the spirit of the game really, particularly from a 50odd year-old Kearsley pro, but it made me realise sport is tough and you’ve got to work hard at it.

“He did it because he wanted to win and I was 32 not out at the time. It was a league game and the light was fading. I think we were chasing 190 and we were 150odd for six, and I was a bit eager.”

However, Neville admitted that it was his brother who was the more serious cricketer.

“He broke Mike Atherton and John Crawley’s local records for Lancashire Schools, played for England and was touring all round for Lancashire seconds at the age of 15 or 16 and he had a genuine choice to make.

“It got to the stage when Lancashire and Manchester United were offering a contract and it was a case of him following in my footsteps,” continued Neville. “I’d enjoyed myself in my first 12 months, we’d won the youth cup, which was a big thing for Manchester United, and there were 15 to 20,000 people there to watch an under-18s game.

“I’d love to have seen how he would have developed as a cricketer because he was well thought of.”

Neville lamented the days when sportsmen could play both football and cricket at the highest level and recalled the time when his own cricketing career was brought to a close by his youth team coach at Manchester United, ironically by the report which appeared in The Bury Times of his exploits with Hayden in the Hamer Cup.

“It was the best and almost the last moment in my career, but it also finished it,” added Neville. “My youth-team coach didn’t realise that I had carried on playing cricket in the summer. He said, ‘what’s all this? You’ve got to stop, you’re not insured’.

“I played one more game – the final that we lost.”