Sir Geoff Hurst nearly quit football four years before he won the World Cup for England - to play cricket.

Sir Geoff, 72, was on the verge of hanging up his footie boots to become a wicket-keeper and batsman, he has revealed.

He says he loved cricket so much he used to regularly miss pre-season training with West Ham at a young age to bat and bowl.

Bat and ball: England World Cup hero Sir Geoff Hurst almost gave up football because of his passion for cricket

1966: Captain Bobby Moore, carried shoulder high by his team mates, holding aloft the World Cup trophy. England defeated Germany 4-2 in the final, played at London's Wembley Stadium

Sir Geoff, the only man to score a hat-trick in a World Cup Final, says his heroes as a boy weren't footballers - but cricket legends like Denis Compton.

He says he was good enough to play for the Essex Second XI and even for the full county - until West Ham boss Ron Greenwood moved him from midfielder to a striker.

The star went on to score hundreds of goals including 228 for his club, and key strikes at the World Cup against West Germany and Argentina.

Sir Geoff, who now lives in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, said: 'I was detrimental to both sports playing football and cricket.

'At the top level to be good enough to play the sport you have to be dedicated to doing that thing.

'I enjoyed playing football and cricket and it came to a time in my late teens and early 20s when I say I was "messing about with both sports".

'Four years before the 1966 World Cup I was still playing more cricket than football. I thought my future probably lay with cricket'

'It was the end of an era where people like Denis Compton and Willy Watson were playing football and cricket internationally for England. How does that work?

'Playing cricket was to the detriment of my football. I was playing cricket until September, even October each year while it was still light in the evenings.

'Then I was coming back to West Ham having missed all the pre-season training and half-a-dozen league games and I was struggling as a footballer.

'Then Ron Greenwood decided that he would move me from midfield to playing up front. I came back from playing cricket and on the first Monday we played Shrewsbury Reserves.

'I wasn't fit and as I was struggling in the middle of the park then Ron put me up front. We played Liverpool and won 1-0 in my first game up there.

'I came off the pitch and it was like my shorts had been dipped in water because I was that unfit.

'But it worked out and in that first season I played 27 games and scored 14 goals from a standing start.

'Nowadays if you pay £50million and someone gets 14 goals in 27 games it's seen as the best buy you've ever seen.

'I look back on my career and appreciate how quickly and how dramatically it rose, once I decided to fully commit to football.

'Four years before the 1966 World Cup I was still playing more cricket than football. I thought my future probably lay with cricket.

'In 1962 I decided to stay behind while West Ham went on a tour to Africa to play cricket for Essex seconds - that was just four years before the World Cup final

'There wasn't a decision to choose between the two sports. It's just that the football took off at a senior level quicker than the cricket.

'Had I played more games for Essex in the first team than I did - I played one but never really had more of a chance - I may have ended up choosing cricket. I never officially made that decision.

'The next season I was the top scorer, then in '64 we won the FA Cup, in '65 we won the Cup Winners' Cup and then everyone knows what happened in '66.

Sir Geoff Hurst the hat-trick scoring hero of the 1966 World Cup final and the other goal scorer Martin Peters

Sir Geoff also began playing sports with another footballer - Sir Bobby Moore - but rather than football, the first competitive game they took part in was cricket.

Luckily for England though, Moore decided much earlier on in life that he would solely focus on football, going on to win the World Cup on that fateful night in 1966.

'Bobby was the best I ever played with,' Hurst said. 'He had such a great football brain and was so determined and focused.

'He was so composed in the big games and big moments. He was able to be as relaxed playing in a World Cup final as he was playing in a five-aside on a Sunday morning.

'His ability to read the game was fantastic. His ability to take on and pass the ball out of defence was excellent. My third goal in the final showed that.