Poker-faced Plumstead automaton shows that trading places is not impossible

A few years ago I had lunch in a cafe in the Belgian city of Kortrijk. Twelve months later I paid a second visit. The waiter greeted me warmly. "It's been a long time. How nice to see you again."

Convinced that my charm and personal charisma had made a big impression on him the first time, I said with a false modesty that he had a remarkable memory. "Oh no, no," the waiter said with a grin. "For me to remember you is easy. You see, I am a big fan of snooker and you look just like Steve Davis."

Ever since that day I have followed the career of Steve Davis with some diligence, happy in the thought that any success the Plumstead automaton met with would see my memory briefly rekindled in Flanders field.

Naturally, therefore, I was delighted this week when the former world champion made it through to the final of the Ladbrokespoker.com Poker Million final, pocketing around £12,000 on the way.

This was no soft celebrity game. Davis had to beat tough opposition in the shape of Bruno Fitoussi, a former world "heads up" poker champion, and David Ulliott, twice winner of the World Series of Poker bracelet. Who got the matching necklace and drop ear-rings, I'm not sure.

Should "Interesting" continue to shine at cards he will join a select band. For though many sports people have pursued successful careers in different disciplines contemporaneously - the baseball and gridiron star "Neon" Deion Sanders is perhaps the best recent example, though the heyday of footballing cricketers apparently came to a stop with the prodigious Arnold Sidebottom - those who have retired from one and taken up another with any sort of success are harder to find.

Though we are often told that Michael Schumacher has been offered terms by various top Italian football clubs, or that Michael Owen could play professional snooker when he gives up on soccer, the fact is that most of the time when the stars swap sports the results are about as convincing as celebrity boxing.

And, as Frank Maloney said of John Pienaar and Tony Hadley, the duo who were to have squared off in the recently aborted BBC bout, "neither of them could punch their way out of a rice pudding", though I for one would pay money to see them try.

For every Mick Quinn who enjoys success as a racehorse trainer - this came as something of a shock for those who watched him during his glory years at St James' Park if only because the words "training" and "Mick Quinn" fitted into a sentence about as comfortably as Paul Scholes and fractal mathematics - there are a dozen equivalents of Ivan Lendl, whose brief turn on the European professional golf circuit produced little of note apart from the cruel jibe that his golf, like his tennis, was not suited to grass.

The most infamous example of the potential fate awaiting those who attempt sport's answer to Trading Places is that of Michael Jordan. In 1994 he turned his back on basketball in order to pursue his dream of playing major league baseball despite the fact that he was 32 and had not played competitively since high school. Unfortunately, when it came to swinging bat at ball, his nickname of "Air" Jordan was just as applicable but by no means as complimentary.

Not that most people in the game expected anything else. As the pitching instructor Tom Hare observed with a Keeganesque relish for precise yet whimsical figures, "Michael is competing against guys who have seen 350,000 fast balls and 204,000 breaking balls."

Baseball, Hare added, delivering a thumping blow to the solar plexus of sporting romantics worthy of Don King in his pomp, "is a function of repetition". Within a year Jordan had gone back to doing what he had repeatedly shown he did best.

Such dire warnings seem destined to pass unheeded, however. Thanks to increased earning, top footballers are no longer compelled to pursue dull careers after they are finished in the game. Instead they are free to indulge their whims and fancies.

As a result the opportunities to pop into a corner shop and buy a newspaper and a Kit Kat from a man with an FA Cup winner's medal are dwindling whereas the chances of watching a former Premiership footballer scratching about in the qualifying rounds of Open championships or in the Drambuie World Ice Golf Championships are increasing rapidly.

You can rest assured that Julian Dicks and Roy Wegerle, both of whom swapped shorts for pastel-coloured slacks in recent years, will not be alone for long.

Steve Davis, meanwhile, will attempt to further his new career in the Poker Million final on March 14. I for one will be rooting for him and so, I suspect, will the Belgian waiter.