Micah Richards was not necessarily looking forward to spending time with Sir Andy Murray – until the two-time Wimbledon winner blew the ex-Manchester City captain away with his wit.
Murray, 37, is currently Down Under trying to coach Novak Djokovic to a record breaking 25th Grand Slam title at the Australian Open. When he was still playing, Murray’s matches – particularly at Wimbledon – were an unmissable national event, where millions across Great Britain would be perched on the edge of their seats as the Scot put everybody through the ringer.
Yet, Murray, who officially retired from tennis this year after the Olympic Games in Paris, has always been levelled with accusations of being a boring character. He was taunted for his supposedly dry personality so often, he began to play into the character and make it his own.
When Murray was invited to take part in the 19th season of A League of Their Own, bubbly Richards admitted he was expecting the big-serving former World No. 1 to be a bit dull. But the ex-England international could not have been more wrong.
In an exclusive interview with Mirror Sport, Richards, who was promoting the new season of Sky’s A League of Their Own which features Murray as a guest, admitted: “I thought Andy Murray was going to be boring.
“I sort of fell into the trap of the media saying ‘oh, he’s really boring, he’s not engaging’. He is the total opposite. What a fella he is, he is unbelievable. He’s really witty. We had a little bit of back and forth about the doubles.
“We laughed that he ‘let his doubles partner down’ and he then said: ‘Well, at least I wasn’t on the bench for Manchester City when they won the league’. He was really quick and I was like, ‘yes, I would love a bit of that’.
“About all of the reports about him being boring, I mean maybe he just wanted to play the media like that when he was playing? Maybe he felt that was the best way to deal with it? In real life, he was one of my favourite guests.”
In 2013, Murray told GQ that he never went out of his way to try and say anything shocking in press conferences and interviews, as he did not want to cause any unnecessary headlines. He said: “I always try to give honest answers. But they are fairly boring so I don’t have to deal with the aftermath of any scandals.”
He added: “Whether people like you or not should be irrelevant. But, to be honest, over the years I have found it difficult to open up and be a bundle of laughs in press conferences or interviews.
“I would say that I am different from what a lot of people think I am like. You don’t get to see what people are really like from in front of the TV.
“It is very easy to be false and fake in front of the camera. But to tell jokes and be fun all the time, that’s not actually very hard to do. If you are going to be truthful and tell things like they are, that is much harder.”
Season 19 of A League of Their Own is on Sky Max and Sky Showcase every Thursday from 9pm.
At Reach and across our entities we and our partners use information collected through cookies and other identifiers from your device to improve experience on our site, analyse how it is used and to show personalised advertising. You can opt out of the sale or sharing of your data, at any time clicking the “Do Not Sell or Share my Data” button at the bottom of the webpage. Please note that your preferences are browser specific. Use of our website and any of our services represents your acceptance of the use of cookies and consent to the practices described in our Privacy Notice and Cookie Notice.