The Magic of Maidens

It is a vividly cold and bright late February afternoon in Yorkshire Dales country and Matthew Hoggard is in the mood to talk. It might be the familiarity of the surroundings - we are sitting in the Hollins Hall Hotel & Country Club not far from his home in Baildon, where Bradford meets the countryside. It might be a certain demob happiness - he and his wife Sarah are about to head to the Caribbean before cricket claims his attentions for another summer. But it might simply be the way things are these days. Time was when the prospect of another interview would have provoked one of those hangdog grimaces. Time, however, has moved on.

"I used to treat the press as the enemy," he says. "Why? I don't know. I just didn't like them. It was a preconceived thing. Now, I realise it's part of the game, because they help you as well. As much as you don't like being in the limelight, you need to get your name out there." Hoggard has come a long way since the day he gave a radio interview that was later used by the reporter - who runs media seminars for sportsmen - as an example of how not to behave with the press. Now he feels secure enough to talk objectively about the way he used to be. Even at 28 the past seems like another world.

Yet at times the temptation has been to take him with a pinch of salt. After the Barmy Army hailed his 7 for 63 at Christchurch in March 2002 with a chorus of "King of the Swingers" Hoggard told the press conference that "they think I'm a monkey". Last summer he was asked during the Old Trafford Test what the team's plans were for the next day. "Bowl them out for 0 and score 500," he replied with a mischievous grin; like the out-swinger the mischievous grin is a Hoggard trademark.

Then came Johannesburg - seven wickets on the final afternoon, 12 in the match and England's best figures since Ian Botham 25 years earlier. Almost overnight he was hailed as England's linchpin, the speck of Yorkshire grit on its way to becoming a pearl. "It's moments like that which you play cricket for," he says. "It meant so much just to be able to say, `that is why I'm there, I'm good enough to get wickets. I'm not just there as a stock bowler.'"

For Hoggard, "Joburg" - the abbreviation is necessary: he has to talk about it a lot - was the culmination of a 14-month spell that began with self-doubt and ended with a place in the world's top 10. Back in December 2003 he was left out of the second Test against Sri Lanka at Kandy. "The thing that really, really peed me off was that it was for James Kirtley, a like-for-like bowler," he says. "And I'm thinking, well, aren't we exactly the same?" The upshot was that Hoggard expected not to make the West Indies trip three months later. But he did ("which was very unfair on James") and was not going to ask for a detailed explanation. It was now that Michael Vaughan approached him. "He said, `Look, your role is to brush up the debris off the shop floor. You'll be bowling maidens' - a bit like Gus Fraser did last time round. And every time I strayed, or tried to get a wicket by doing something different, he'd roll his eyes and smile and say, `Hoggy, stop getting up those steps, you're not leaving the shop floor.'"

The humdrum role of floor manager suited Hoggard down to the ground, which his feet tend not to leave in any case. While Steve Harmison blasted away, Hoggard chipped and chiselled, threatening mass destruction only with his hat-trick at Bridgetown. He finally felt wanted because he had found his niche. Since that series, Hoggard says, he has felt "more settled and more confident".

But what about Johannesburg? What was that if it was not straying from the shop floor? "It swung a little bit more. The wicket wasn't as flat and as true as others had been and the South Africans were under a lot of pressure. We were on a roll. We just knew we were going to win that Test match. And with Graeme Smith not batting [Smith came in at No. 8 in the second innings after his own coach hit him on the head in fielding practice] we were asking the South Africans: `Where's your captain, you're scoring your captain's runs again, is he hiding, what's up with him?' Even the South Africans were saying, `Don't know'. When they say that to you, it gives you a bit of a boost."

The rise of England has by and large run parallel with the rise of Hoggard. When he first came into the side in 2000 he detected an insecure selfishness. "People were jealous of each other's success," he says. It was also the summer Darren Gough and Andy Caddick started to gel as a new-ball pair but Hoggard says the banter between them always had an edge. "I don't think they were the best of mates - they were playing partners. There was this underlying nastiness. It wasn't said and they weren't flat out nasty to each other. It was more, this is what I've done, flick Vs at you, this is what you've done. Now someone says this is what I've done, and we say, yeah, well done, we're very pleased for you. It's more of a family or a club atmosphere."

It is the kind of warmth Hoggard responds to. He is a man with little side to him. He can be shy but in the right circumstances has plenty to say ("I wouldn't say I wasn't interesting"). His messy mop of blond hair is a welcome antidote to the spike-and-bleach brigade. He prefers a country pub with a couple of mates and a pint to a roomful of acquaintances. He hates London ("I could just about imagine living in Worcester") and gestures dreamily to the moors. He obviously feels so at home walking there with his two dogs - Billy, an excitable young Dobermann, and Molly, a border collie - that any mention of them has almost become a cliché. He responds to Vaughan's "family atmosphere" because it is the world view that makes most sense to him. And why would anyone want it any other way? "The way Vaughany goes about his captaincy, it's more relaxed," he says. "I'm not having a dig at Nasser; I love Nass to bits. But you can see the team are enjoying their cricket a lot more because they're not as frightened not to perform."

The days when an anxious Hussain would accompany Hoggard back to his mark are a distant memory; the results of his new-found freedom are pleasingly predictable. Before his comeback in the Caribbean in March 2004 he had taken 79 Test wickets in his first 22 games at just under 33. In the 16 Tests since then he has grabbed 64 at 29, which does not compare badly with Harmison's 70 at 28. He has varied his angle of attack, using the crease far more ("Duncan Fletcher's been telling me for years") and makes sure he sends down straight ones to complement the away-swingers and keep the batsman guessing.

But what about that new delivery, the nip-backer into the right-hander - away from the leftie -that he used so well in South Africa? "Yeah, where did that come from?" he says with a laugh. A vainer man might have taken the credit but this new variation turns out to be a complete fluke: the ball that bounced and cut back into Jacques Kallis' stumps off the inside edge in the first innings at Johannesburg was an intended out-swinger. "It's something Fletcher picked up on. Before, the seam came out perfectly straight," he says. "Now it's coming out more scrambled. It started in the West Indies, when I was getting lazy with my front arm. I just pushed it a bit and didn't follow through with my right arm. The seam wasn't coming down perfectly and sometimes it was going away from the left-handers, which was perfect. I've no idea how that's working."

No matter, this piece of serendipity has turned Hoggard into a more complete bowler. Of his 79 Test victims prior to the tour of the West Indies, only 23 (29%) were left-handers; of the 64 wickets he has taken since then, the proportion rises to 41%. True, West Indies massaged the figures by having about "three million cack-handers" as Hoggard puts it with that distinctive high-pitched giggle, but he still had to get the wickets. And the way he tormented the South African captain Smith, another left-hander, shows that he is facing up to his new-ball responsibilities. Smith is one of 19 Test players to have fallen either three or four times to Hoggard: of them only Daryl Tuffey is not a top-order batsman. He takes reputations in his likably lugubrious stride.

"I think I've realised that you don't have to bowl magic balls, because 90% of batsmen get themselves out. You don't see 10 absolute jaffas that pitch middle, take the feathered edge and are caught by keeper or first slip." That might sound obvious but, when you are charging in with your career on the line, the temptation is to place magic ahead of maidens. It is only since Hoggard has felt at ease in the side that he has understood the importance of pressure. "I aspire to be someone like Shaun Pollock. He's got the exact role that I'm trying to bowl in the England side."

Hoggard compares being a swing bowler to being a spinner: when the conditions are in your favour, the tendency can be to strive too hard. "You've got to bowl as if you were on a flat wicket. You put the ball in the right area and instead of waiting 12 balls for it to do something you have to wait three balls. But, if the ball's swinging, I can be guilty of getting far too excited and rushing in like a headless chicken." Hoggard recalls successive Tests against India in 2002, at Trent Bridge and Headingley, when he delivered from too close to the stumps and allowed the likes of Sanjay Bangar and Rahul Dravid to leave him alone time and again. One senses that the more mature Hoggard, with Fletcher's cry of "trigonometry" ringing in his ears, would make better use of the angles.

And when the ball refuses to swing? Hoggard is less bothered than he used to be, although the temperature rises when he relays an imaginary conversation - another of his endearing foibles - between an angry spectator at Headingley ("Why aren't you swinging it?") and himself ("Because the ball isn't swinging"). And he even has a theory about why English bowlers are struggling to make the ball move in the air as much as they used to: the manufacturers Dukes recently replaced the plastic inserts, which go under the red outer casing, with leather ones, thus allowing the ball to lose its shape more quickly.

It is a rare example of Hoggard seeking explanations that fall outside his jurisdiction: for an international sportsman his self-appraisals are refreshingly honest. When he admitted to nerves during the home series against Sri Lanka in 2002, some discerned weakness. To Hoggard, however, it was simply old-fashioned straight-talking. "I've been criticised before for saying I've bowled like a bag of spanners. And people say, you can't say that. And I say, yes I can, because I did."

Does he still get nervous? "Yes, but not as nervous. My first over in any Test match, my heart is like b-doom, b-doom. But after that first over, it's just another game." Hoggard conjurs up other scenarios which get the pulse rate going. "I hate the 15 minutes before the toss because there's always the anticipation of whether you are going to bowl or not. And I hate going to bed about eight down, or seven down, because you know you're going to be bowling in the morning." For those who believe that England fast bowlers should ooze machismo at all times, this is quite an admission.

But then Hoggard cares little for creating impressions. He is substance rather than style, although one would expect nothing else from a player who grew up under the critical gaze of David Byas. "When I was 14 or 15 he used to tell me: `It's a very simple game. Put a handkerchief on a length, hit that six times out of six and you'll get wickets.'" Hoggard's other mentors have been Steve Oldham at Yorkshire and, with England, Troy Cooley. "He motivates me by saying, `You're the engine of the team'. I like the responsibility. I've had that ever since I went to India and played two Tests as the most senior bowler. And in South Africa this time I was the most senior bowler. Every time I go away I seem to be the most senior bowler - even when I haven't been."

That touch of quirkiness is pure Hoggard. The next step in his evolution takes place this summer against Australia. There have already been calls to spare him an early mauling at the hands of Matthew Hayden by leaving him out of the one-day games that precede the Ashes (Hoggard's one-day international economy rate is 5.15) but that seems a typically English response to a problem that is yet to arise. Hoggard prefers to think about ways of beating Australia. "If we can hit them hard first up and put them under pressure - we've proved in the past: put Australia under pressure and they're vulnerable."

It is one of the few moments where Hoggard seems to be toeing the party line. The rest of the time he is very much his own person. How else does one explain his claim that the second-best lunches on the circuit - behind Lord's - are at Derby? "A lovely roast with potatoes, veg, the lot," he drools. Johannesburg might have changed Hoggard's career but he is as down-to-earth as he always was.