Not Much Fits

He is a stiltwalking 6ft 7in, and for all his unfortunate choice of girlfriends, Crouch has evolved from a figure of fun and ridicule to a national mascot. There is no getting away from the fact that he often looks as if he is about to fall over his own feet, or that he isn’t as good in the air as somebody of his giant proportions should be. Nevertheless, he scored a goal on Wednesday that would still have been marvellous if it had been scored by a shorter, more correctly proportioned person.

2 Maria Sharapova

Perhaps the scariest aspect of tennis pin-up (but only in bedrooms with high ceilings) and the Wicker Woman that is Maria Sharapova is less her admission that she is “not a social bunny, I’m a dork”, more that she has reached a statuesque 6ft 2in and is still growing. The Russian should, perhaps, see a trained medical professional about this.

3 Kerri Walsh

If any sport offers an advantage to the taller person, it’s volleyball. Some jump, but others, such as the much- too-tall 6ft 3in American beach volleyball millionairess Kerri Walsh, can simply stand there at the net and swat anything that comes her way. And she does. Her mantra? “Play dirty and be ready for anything.” Somebody should tell her that we are talking about beach volleyball here.

4 Suleiman Ali Nashnush

The tallest basketball player of all time was a Libyan international. He just kept growing and growing, until in 1960 he reached the frankly freakish 8ft Åin mark before deciding it was time for an operation in Rome which — somehow — stopped him growing. When he died in 1991, he was the world’s tallest living person.

5 Ivo Karlovic

Swings and roundabouts for poor Ivo. At a skyscraper- esque 6ft 10in, the Croatian tennis player is one of the finest servers of his generation. Tragically for him, his opponents — even his British opponents — have discovered that his groundstrokes are less fearsome.

6 Michael Gross

At a traffic-light-length 6ft 7in, the so-called Albatross was the finest butterfly swimmer of the 1980s and has three Olympic golds on his mantelpiece in Germany to prove it. The really weird thing was the Albatross’s inhuman wingspan of 7ft 5in.

7 Nikolai Valuev

The Russian boxer clocks in at 7ft 2in. Alas, after winning his world championship in 2005, the Beast From The East discovered that the belt he’d won was too small for his 300lb girth. He gave it away.

8 Margo Dydek

“Large Marge”, below, is a hard-to-find-a-nice-dress-for 7ft 2in. It’s always been the case since she emerged from the womb as a scary 22-incher, while as a 5ft 11in 13-year-old, she was a rather gawky Polish teenager. Wisely, she turned to basketball. The tallest player in WNBA history also speaks five languages.

9 Louise Moeller

The great Danish jockey weighs in at just 8st. So far, so averagely underweight. However, she is an unfeasible 6ft 1in tall. “People don’t believe me when I tell them I’m a jockey,” she points out. They wouldn’t, would they?

10 Joel Garner

At 6ft 8in the West Indian paceman terrified almost every batsman who faced him. Big Bird (a benign nickname for a fearsome beast) remains the tallest Test bowler. He specialised in the yorker, and being frightening.