On the Natural History of Elite Cricketers and Footballers

My friend Mike and I get together once or twice a year to watch football or cricket. Given the poor state of our preferred teams (Crystal Palace Football Club and Kent County Cricket Club), our post-match conversations are often somewhat subdued, and recently have increasingly touched on death. This is a reflection of our ages (late sixties). We have growing awareness of our own physical decrepitude, and also the regular occurrence of newspaper obituaries of cricketers and footballers who were heroes in our youth, some of them our own age or younger. The first year that I took an interest in sport was 1966, when I was ten years old (Mike is a couple of years younger). I followed England’s progress in the football World Cup on the family’s black and white TV, and it is especially poignant that only one of the winning eleven is still alive at the time of writing (Sir Geoff Hurst). I was more of a cricket fan however, and was glued to that year’s Test series between England and the West Indies. This was despite hapless England losing the series three matches to one, and getting through no fewer than twenty-three players, and three captains (Mike Smith, Colin Cowdrey and Brian Close). These were the first sportsmen that I really related to, and I followed their careers through subsequent years – and have been saddened when some of their obituaries have appeared in the papers.

The England team that won the fifth Test against the West Indies in 1966. England used 23 players during that series; only Ken Higgs (bottom row, far right) played in all five Tests

It seemed to Mike and I, however, that we were reading fewer obituaries for cricketers from that era than for footballers, and so, retired academics that we are, we conducted a little research project to test the hypothesis that elite cricketers live longer than elite footballers. 1966 was a good year to make a comparison, as the World Cup football squad was twenty-two players in total, almost matching the twenty-three cricketers who played in that year’s Tests. Mike crunched the numbers, and the results are set out in Tables 1 (cricketers) and 2 (footballers).

Table 1 Table 2

You will see that the average age of death of those footballers and cricketers who have passed on is remarkably similar (78.4 – 78.2). However, just three of the football squad are still alive (in February 2026), compared with seven of the Test cricketers, meaning that in the long run, the cricketers are likely to have a higher average age of death, supporting our hypothesis.

There are, of course outliers in both groups. Only two footballers failed to reach three-score-years-and-ten: Bobby Moore, tragically dead of cancer at 51 and Alan Ball, who had a fatal heart attack at 62. Among the cricketers, Colin Milburn had a heart attack aged just 48, following a sad life of excess, while Ken Barrington shockingly died, also of a heart attack, aged 50, while assistant manager of the 1980-1 England touring party in the West Indies. Colin Cowdrey suffered a series of strokes, and died aged 67. At the other end of the scale, three of the cricketers reached ninety, and Bob Barber (90) and Mike Smith (93) are still going strong at the time of writing. Overall, the average lifespans of both groups was greater than that expected of men of their ages in the 1960s (around 71.5 years)

What might be reasons for the apparent greater longevity of the cricketers? On the face of it, elite football is a more athletic sport, requiring greater levels of physical fitness that might be expected to translate to a longer life (no one could accuse Colin Milburn or Colin Cowdrey of having textbook athletic physiques). Two possible factors suggest themselves. The first is social class and education, both well-known as being linked to differences in health and longevity in the population as a whole. Considering education: five footballers attended grammar school, the rest going to secondary modern schools, often leaving at fifteen. In contrast, eleven cricketers went to grammar or public schools, with three going on to university (Cowdrey, Smith and Barber), while John Snow went to teachers’ training college. Social class is a bit harder to ascertain; while the large majority of the footballers were brought up in working class homes, they could be said to have transcended their class by becoming elite sportsmen – though their financial rewards were a fraction of those received by footballers today.

Class differences might be reflected in differing lifestyle habits. The lifestyles of professional sportsmen in the 1960s were rather less pristine than today. Training and dietary regimes were comparatively rudimentary, and smoking and drinking were generally not controlled. Perhaps the footballers had less healthy lifestyles than the cricketers, either during or following their careers. At the same time, smoking and drinking were endemic in cricketing circles as well - drink is still an issue for England’s cricketers today, as the recent Ashes tour demonstrated.

Another factor could be the apparently high rate of Alzheimer’s disease and related neuro-degenerative conditions among the footballers. Five of the World Cup winning team died of Alzheimer’s disease: Nobby Stiles, Ray Wilson and Martin Peters contracting the condition in their late sixties or early seventies, and the Charlton brothers in their early eighties (England manager Sir Alf Ramsey, a former player, also died of Alzheimer’s). Recent research has shown a clear link between heading footballs and ‘chronic traumatic encephalopathy’, which has similar symptoms and outcome to Alzheimer’s disease. A recent Scottish study found that professional footballers have a 3.5 higher chance of dying from a neuro-degenerative disease than than the population as a whole. Headers are still part of the game today, of course, though they have now been banned in youth football. Today’s footballers may be protected to an extent by lighter and softer balls than those used in the 1960s, and restrictions on heading the ball during training.

Cricketers are not immune from contracting Alzheimer’s disease: for everyone its prevalence increases with age, with up to a third of those in their nineties contracting the condition. In our sample, Derek Underwood died of Alzheimer’s at the comparatively early age of 78.

The 1920s: Cricketing Footballers and Footballing Cricketers

His curiosity piqued, Mike then wondered about the comparative longevity of professional footballers and cricketers of earlier generations. There were of course no pre-war World Cup football squads to use as samples, and few previous years saw a cricket Test series use as many as twenty-three players. Mike settled on the twenty-two footballers who contested the England v Scotland home international match at Sheffield on 10 April 1920 (England won 5-4), comparing their ages at death with the sixteen cricketers who made up the touring party for the 1920-21 Ashes series in Australia (England lost 0-5), along with six further players who appeared in the first 1921 Test against Australia at Trent Bridge (England lost by 10 wickets – not much has changed since). Tables 3 and 4 outline the findings.

Table 3

Table 4

As might be expected, average longevity for both groups was lower in 1920 than in 1966, reflecting the trend in the population as a whole. The Scottish footballers had earlier deaths than the English footballers, again reflecting the fact that throughout the twentieth century, life expectancy in Scotland was lower than in England (it still is). But the average age of death of the footballers as a whole group was exactly the same as that of the cricketers, contrasting with the greater longevity among the cricketers in 1966. This could of course simply reflect random variation in a fairly small sample. But might there be other reasons?

One factor may be that in the 1920s many played both sports at professional level. Both football and cricket seasons were shorter than today, and the physical demands were fewer. Footballers and cricketers needed employment during the respective off-seasons, and a good few maintained their income by switching sports. Our combined sample includes two double internationals – among the cricketers, Harry Makepeace also played football for England, and among the footballers, Andy Ducat played cricket for England in the third Test in 1921. Two more of the cricketers played football professionally: Harry Howell and ‘Patsy’ Hendren, who as well as being one of England’s finest batsmen between the wars, played over 300 games for Brentford (and died in his early seventies of the footballers’ condition, Alzheimer’s disease).

There were still links between cricket and football in the 1960s - the last double international, Arthur Milton, was still opening the batting for Gloucestershire in 1966 - but they were becoming less strong as the respective seasons lengthened and overlapped, and the demands of each sport increased. Sir Geoff Hurst, no less, played in one county cricket match for Essex in 1962, and among the 1966 cricket sample, John Murray was offered a contract by Brentford, but chose cricket instead, while Ken Higgs and Brian Close were England Youth football internationals. In the early 1950s, Close was on the books of Leeds United, and later Arsenal (he was sacked from the latter for prioritising cricket), and played a few games for Bradford City.

The scorecard for Geoff Hurst's one and only county cricket match. Don't give up the day job.

Returning to the 1920s, while the footballers were overwhelmingly working class, the cricket sample included six amateurs (listed as such in table 4), who attended public schools . Three, Donald Knight, Lionel Tennyson and Rockley Wilson, went up to Oxbridge. We might hypothesise that their lifespans would be longer than the professional cricketers (and the footballers), but in this small sample, the average age of death of the six amateurs was actually lower (68.8 years) than the professionals (73.4 years). While Percy Fender lived to 92, three other amateurs died in their sixties, and England’s captain, JWHT Douglas, drowned in a boating accident aged just 48. By contrast, three great professionals: Wilfred Rhodes, Bert Strudwick and Frank Woolley all reached their nineties.

The 1890s: The Gulf between Amateur and Professional Cricketers

To analyse the differences in longevity between amateur and professional cricketers more precisely, we need a bigger sample, and we will also travel back in time again to 1895. I have written before about a set of replica Wills cigarette cards of cricketers from that year that I have framed on my wall. It includes fifty players, evenly split between amateurs and professionals. Excluding two who were at different times both amateur and professional, a reasonable comparison can be made (tables 5 and 6).

Table 5

Table 6

In this sample, the twenty-four amateurs had a decent average lifespan of 70.4 years, with six living into their eighties. By contrast, the average lifespan of the twnety-four professionals was just 59.6 years, the only octogenarian being Alec Hearne, who at 88 was the longest lived of the combined sample. At the time, the grammar school-attending white collar class was in its infancy, and professional cricketers were drawn from the ranks of mill and factory workers, miners and labourers. Training and fitness regimes were non-existent. Wages were low, and lifestyles, as for the male population as a whole, mainly revolved round the pub. In the early 1890s, Yorkshire’s professionals were described as “ten drunks and a parson” (the latter being batsman Louis Hall, who was a Methodist lay preacher). The county’s (amateur) captain, Lord Hawke, cracked the whip, dismissed several of the worst offenders, and Yorkshire won the county championship in 1896. Hawke also raised the professionals’ wages and brought in bonuses for good performances, with the aim of raising their status from labourers (as they were regarded in many other counties) to skilled tradesmen. Eventually other counties followed suit, and while still lowly paid by modern standards, professional cricketers came to gain some greater rewards and status for their efforts.

However, only eight of our twenty-four professionals reached three-score-years-and-ten, compared with fifteen out of twenty-four amateurs. Some on both sides of the sample had very early deaths. Among the professionals, the great medium paced bowler George Lohmann died of tuberculosis aged just 35, while left arm spinner Johnny Briggs died at 39 of a neuro-degenerative disease brought on by syphilis infection. Fast bowler Tom Richardson died of a heart attack triggered by obesity and alcohol misuse aged 42, and the amateur J J Ferris died of enteric fever aged 35 while serving in the British army in the Boer war. Another sadly frequent cause of death among cricketers is suicide; David Frith, who has studied this topic, believes that elite cricketers have higher rates of suicide than those in other sports. One amateur, former England captain Andrew Stoddart, and one professional, batsman Arthur Shrewsbury, ended their own lives, aged 52 and 49 respectively.

On a lighter note, the link between cricket and football was present as far back as 1895. Professional Frank Sugg played cricket for England and for several football league clubs, but the two football internationals in the sample were both amateurs: John Dixon and C B Fry, who has an all-round sporting CV that will never be matched. He captained England at cricket, played for England at football and for Southampton in the F A Cup final, and set a world long jump record that stood for over twenty years (for good measure, he also achieved a first class honours degree in classics from Oxford).

Charles Fry, who has the finest all-round record of any British sportsperson

Conclusion

The lifespans of our cricket and football samples broadly match what we would expect from the male population as a whole. Average age at death increased steadily from our 1895 sample to that of 1966. Overall, those from higher social classes lived longer than those from the working class, and we have even confirmed a difference in longevity between England and Scotland (though we cannot of course assess the influence of ethnicity or gender from these samples). The shadow of Alzheimer’s disease looms over the footballers. But while our little study was about death, it also says something about the lives of elite sportsmen. What might a similar study find in, say, fifty years time?

And where will our late night, wine-fuelled discussions take us in the future? I look forward to Mike’s next visit, and the chance to explore ever more obscure cricketing and footballing questions.