Matthew Hoggard: England's best bowler, statistically
A BBC statistical analysis concluded that Matthew Hoggard, and not James Anderson or Fred Trueman or even Ian Botham, was England's best Test bowler till date
ESPNcricinfo staff
21-Apr-2015
Writing for BBC , Marc Higginson, with the help of Test Match Special statistician Andrew Samson reveals that Matthew Hoggard pips the many bowling legends of England cricket to emerge as the nation's best Test Bowler ever.
Perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised. Four of the five batsmen Hoggard dismissed the most - India's Virender Sehwag (six times), Australian Matthew Hayden (six), West Indies opener Chris Gayle (five) and India's Rahul Dravid (five) - were among the most influential batsmen of his era.
"Hoggard was brilliant, a fine new-ball bowler, the bowler I would have liked to have been," says BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew. "He was accurate, he kept going and bowled a lot of overs. He would very rarely bowl a bad ball. He just plugged away, ball after ball, uphill or into the wind, which sometimes helped him swing it.