Ash Barty is not just a tennis legend. She’s a great cricketer (and golfer) too

George Orwell wrote that all animals were equal but some were more equal than others. The same applies to athletes. Some of them have an almost unearthly ability to turn their hand to whichever sport they fancy. Just ask anyone who watched Ash Barty – the women’s world No1 tennis player who has retired as the reigning Wimbledon and Australian Open champion – turn a cricket whim into a full-time contract with the Brisbane Heat in 2015.

What started as a conversation at an awards dinner for Australia’s women – during which a teenage Barty spoke about the pressures of being on the international sport hamster wheel – turned into a spell that reignited her fledgling tennis career and changed the way that Queensland Cricket prepared its players. She did not know it at the time but Barty was embarking on a journey that would change her life.

Perhaps the greatest indication of her talent came not on the court or at the wicket, but on the golf course. “She was watching a golf tournament on TV,” says Dave Richards, Barty’s former coach at Queensland Cricket. “She turned around and said: ‘I reckon I could have a go at that.’ She went out the following day and shot a round of 81. Eighty-one! That was the first time she had ever picked up a set of clubs. It gives you an idea of the kind of talent we were dealing with.”

Barty could have turned her hand to pretty much anything. Luckily for the Brisbane Heat, cricket appealed to her. “She’s very team-orientated and when she came in it was really like she was crying out for this team environment,” says Scott Prestwidge, assistant coach at the Heat. “She loved it. Any team meetings, team dinners, she was the first one there. She really embraced it. It also helped her when she went back