Meet the cricketer who just won an Olympic silver medal

Sunette Viljoen from South Africa clinched a silver medal at the Rio 2016 on Friday to become the first international cricketer to win a medal in the last 96 years.

The javelin throw silver medalist has played 1 Test and 17 ODIs for South African women cricket team, according to Sportskeeda. During her cricketing career as an all rounder from 2000 to 2002, she made 198 runs and took 5 wickets in the ODIs. She scored 71, her highest international score in a match, against India in March 2002 in Paarl that had players like Anjum Chopra, Jhulan Goswami and Mithali Raj playing for India during that time.

Viljoen recorded her best javelin throw at 64.92m on Thursday in Rio de Janeiro, only to be beaten by Croatian Sara Kolak whose throw reached 66.18m. The last cricketer to have won a medal at Olympics was Jack MacBryan from England who won gold for the hockey team in 1920. 

Viljoen, who also became the first South African woman to reach the podium at Rio 2016, took the ninth medal for the country. Popularly called 'the Javelin Queen', she missed a medal in London 2012 by a small margin. 

Interestingly, South Africa is popular in producing champions in multi-sports. While AB de Villiers used to be a tennis player, Jonty Rhodes was in the national hockey team. Merchant de Lange took the exact opposite route of Viljoen, who became an International fast bowler after starting off as a Javelin thrower.