UFO Info Week-End

I pull faces at my girlfriend at home I just go ‘w-a-a-r-g-h’ I pull faces at the dog to anybody

“I pull faces at my girlfriend at home, I just go ‘w-a-a-r-g-h’, I pull faces at the dog, to anybody really, it’s just one of those things I do. I make stupid noises as well, I just sit in the dressing room going, ‘Blup, blup’. It’s just me acting the goat.” There are substantiated stories that Nasser Hussain, the venerated England captain, is not above having a Hoggard face pulled in front of him.Hoggard is a singular fellow whose eccentric behaviour is matched by his rustic gait. He does not so much walk as trudge, his shoulders stooped, his eyes serious. He is his own man.Fortunately, his deeds last winter, when he took nine Test wickets in India, 17 in New Zealand and looked as though he could be the one-day part as well, should ensure that the full-time gurning career is kept on hold. Whatever the self-confessed traits of his demeanour they should not deflect attention from the fact that he is an intelligent and thoughtful individual.They cannot remotely dissipate his overwhelming merit as a fast bowler, one that makes him wholly the right candidate to take over the torch. Hoggard has that innate quality which can make an international bowler It is about determination, perseverance, willingness.

In short, he has a big heart.The wider world first witnessed this in India last December. Hoggard, suddenly thrust into the role of England’s main strike bowler because of the absence of Andrew Caddick and Darren Gough, took to it immediately. He bowled long spells on unresponsive pitches and he did so to a carefully laid plan without a decent gurn in sight. He kept his lines tight.In Ahmedabad he did for Sachin Tendulkar with a little away-swinger after adhering rigidly to the area just outside off stump where the batsman had to play. He bowled a series of short balls to Sourav Ganguly, who eventually obliged by carving to third man. This was intelligent as well as dogged bowling.”I think my disciplines have got better,” he said. “It’s harder to bowl a bad ball at the top level and get away with it.

You’ve got to cut it it, think on your feet, if it’s not swinging come up with a plan and execute that plan, change your bowling. In about eight years’ time I should have cracked it.”Hoggard has a neat line in self-deprecation, though you could see his point in the county match at Taunton last week when he tried to have Ian Blackwell caught on the hook. One over went for 28 runs, which might have been sticking to a plan too far. His irrepressibly mischievous and probably strong-minded nature can no doubt make him a handful to those who would seek to be in charge of him. He gets on well with Hussain, deeply respects him but is unafraid to see the captain’s weaknesses.”We have our spats like he does with everybody,” said Hoggard “He can be a prat sometimes but so can all skippers. He gets moody but that’s what you want, somebody that you’re scared of. He’s got a heart, he’s got the verbals, he can fly off the handle and sometimes he’s wrong, but he’ll shout at you and next day it’s forgotten.

He’s somebody you want to perform for.”Sometimes I need shouting at, he’ll have a right go at me. Then I’ll go back and take the piss out of him later and when he looks at me I’ll go, ‘Hagh, hagh, hagh’.”Hoggard would probably draw the line at this approach to the coach, Duncan Fletcher, though he has named him Yoda after the sage Jedi master in the Star Wars movies. “He’s always got a theory, always got an answer to the question, he’s a fountain of knowledge who doesn’t spout things or say things for their own sake. You stop and listen.”Before he was recruited by Yorkshire, Hoggard had ambitions to be a vet, and had it not been for the late Phil Carrick’s unequivocal recommendation he suspects that at 25 he could still be studying.It was Carrick to whom he talked frequently when he twice came close to leaving the county. He could not hold down a regular place and was about seventh in the seam-bowling pecking order.”I thought about whether I was moving for the right reasons, whether it was because I thought I was good enough for the first team or if I was running away from a challenge.” By 1999 he made the England team, famously sitting padded up and helmeted on the Lord’s balcony as they edged to a nailbiting two-wicket victory against West Indies. Despite injuries he has been on the team fringe and in selectorial plans ever since.He is both wary and weary of media criticism (“We were written off by you lot before India”), a more sensitive soul than you might suppose, but is equally objective if England fall short (“I think going to New Zealand from India with the extra freedom, we switched off the first few games and by the time we adjusted it was too late in the one-day series”).Hoggard is now working diligently on a more automatic inswinger, prepared for the hard slog that awaits England in the next year, ready to assume the mantle of opening bowler, without pulling a face..