There's only one bowler

What is Darren Gough doing here? Perched on the edge of the players' balcony at Chelmsford, he watches his second-division team-mates falling apart against Leicestershire. A few months ago he was drawing audiences of millions as the twinkle-toed housewives' favourite on BBC's Strictly Come Dancing. He has had TV offers, plenty of them, and he makes no secret of the fact that he wants to be a presenter. Yet here he sits, nursing a hamstring, signed up for another two years to bowl at the County Championship's underclass.

One cannot imagine Phil Tufnell returning from the jungle to give county cricket one last shot. He would probably rather eat witchetty grubs. So what is Goughie doing here? He points to the sky, the sun, the game in front of him, as if these three things alone - this ever-English snapshot of outdoor pursuit - could somehow hold the answer. The real reason, however, is locked in a cabinet in Melbourne. And although Gough wears wrap-around shades against a bright sun, there is a feeling that one of the things they are hiding is the glittering reflection of the World Cup in his eyes.

It is not long before the subject comes up. "Everyone's been saying to me they can't believe I've not been around in the England squad this winter," he says. "Everybody I'm playing against." Gough needs no Max Clifford to do his PR. He still wants that place in the 2007 World Cup squad and, if he doesn't get it, it won't be because he has slipped off the radar.

"When England were losing [the one-day series] in India, that David Lloyd from Sky said live on TV, `What do you expect when England's best one-day bowler is sitting at home watching?' You need experience to win competitions, as teams have proved in the past, and I know I can still do a job in international cricket. Other players who tried to fill my boots didn't do any better than Darren Gough, and they went for a lot more runs than I would go for."

It is all delivered in the usual Gough style, so blunt, so bluff, so endearingly open that it is hard to hold anything against him, even the unnerving Tom Cruise-like habit of speaking about himself in the third person. He is 35 and his knee needs fine-tuning every six weeks by a specialist in Munich but Gough's determination is undimmed. It is the old Barnsley stubbornness, he says. "You have to be tough where I come from. You work for what you've got and, when you've got it, you keep going. You don't just stop. I'm never satisfied." Retirement - pah. Gough could be the posterboy for Gordon Brown's deferred pension scheme.

But is he cricket's Teddy Sheringham or is he just an England junkie, deluding himself that he is still a contender? His answer is simple. "I've been missed when I've not played," he says. "The problem is, at my age and with my experience, when I do play I have to do the hard work. I bowl at the start of the innings, when the ball's getting slapped all round the park, and I bowl at the end 'cos I'm the expert player; I have to take the brunt of the work at that point. And I can take that because my team-mates know I'm doing that job. But the media, at the end of the day, just look at my figures and how many runs I've gone for."

What about the management - do they still think he has something to offer? "I would say so. I know the players do; three of them have said so publicly. One thing what made me laugh was the quote last year that said `We know 10 out of the 11 line-up for the first World Cup game.' I don't think he [Duncan Fletcher] does because, although he has an idea who he'd like to ask, performances still have to match that. Flintoff is the only bowler who sticks his hand up and warrants a place. The rest of us are in a shoot-out."

If that is the case, Gough might just have spiked his own guns when he opted out of the Pakistan tour, citing family reasons. He used the time to holiday with his kids - Dubai, Lapland, the Grenadines - and to effect a reconciliation with his ex-wife Anna. But the management were reportedly not best pleased to see him strutting his sequinned stuff in Strictly Come Dancing. Gough maintains that the TV offer came later. "I won't have people saying I didn't go on tour to do a dancing programme," he says crossly. "I did it to spend some time with my children. And I'll stick by that till the day I die."

Still, if anything could remind England what they were missing, surely it was that slice of prime-time. There on the dance floor were all the qualities that made him so beloved in the dressing room - the gift for encouragement, the natural competitiveness, the infectious sense of fun. Everyone knew Colin Jackson and Zoe Ball were the better dancers but that could not stop him. Gough won out through the sheer force of his character. Of course, there is still some machismo left over. "Certain people took it really serious and were doing eight hours a day, like Colin, James," he likes to point out. "I was doing two or three hours max."

But that is our Goughie, never one to hide his light under a bushel when a high-mounted revolving beam will do. It is hard to over-estimate his confidence in his own abilities. It is also hard to knock it. After all, it is this 100% proof self-certainty that has sustained him through an 11-year international career and two near-impossible comebacks. "If you don't believe in yourself, who will?" he says with a shrug.

When Gough came to Test cricket in 1994, taking 14 wickets in his first two matches at home and 20 more in three Ashes Tests away (not to mention a rabble-rousing fifty at Sydney), the nation was quick to pin its hopes on his broad backside. A proto-Freddie, Gough became the lion-hearted inspiration for supporters, for his fellow players, even for the young tyros who would eventually succeed him.

"A lot of players in interviews mention me as being a big influence on their career," he says proudly. "And they've all mentioned me in their books. For me that is the biggest accolade you can get." With Andrew Caddick he established England's third most productive new-ball partnership behind Ian Botham and Bob Willis, Fred Trueman and Brian Statham. And there lies the rub.

"It's sad really when you look back at some of the players," says Gough. "Alec Stewart was a great player, myself, Caddick, Hick. Graham Thorpe was a hugely under-rated player. These guys never won an Ashes, so they'll never get the recognition they deserve." It is not the only thing he feels he missed out on.

He had married young and his family life buckled under the pressures of an ever-increasing schedule. "Cricket was taking off as a sport but the ECB was putting pressure on us to play more and more and be away from home more," he says. "People said having your family around on tour gets in the way but it doesn't. Having your family there makes you feel at home wherever you are. It's the best thing for you. It stops loneliness, it stops ... " He thinks, decides he has said enough. "Everything."

It is surprising to hear him say there were many times when he thought about quitting the game: at the start of his career, when he felt he was not getting the breaks he deserved; after the birth of his second child; and, of course, when his knee gave out in the winter of 2001-02. It could not have come at a worse time. "I was flying; 25 wickets a series, and I was consistently England's best bowler." He had twice been named Man-of-the-Series as Nasser Hussain's England put together their run of four successive series victories against Zimbabwe, West Indies, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

There were more disappointments to come. He moved to Buckinghamshire to be closer to a family that was unravelling; and he had to turn down the prize he had always wished for, the Yorkshire captaincy. Anna was no longer his wife but she was still his confidante. Was that not strange? "Never let anybody else into my world," he replies, smiling behind the shelter of his shades. "That's the best way. Never show your weakness." Does he not have close friends? "Of course I have close friends. I would never tell them anything."

Looking back, he thinks he retired from Test cricket too early. "I did it because my knee was in such a state that I didn't think I could get through two days, never mind five. But with going to Germany and my fitness improving I've gradually got better and better. If I'd waited and not rushed back to play for England I could probably still have been playing for England now, even though I'm 35, 'cos I am good enough."

Hold on a minute. You reckon you could be in the Test attack right now, bowling with Flintoff, Harmison and Hoggard? "Without a doubt." And you know that he is almost itching to demonstrate it. Journalists are not high in his esteem and proving them wrong is one of his favourite pastimes ("It makes people look so funny and crap at their job when I get back playing again").

Reports that he applied for the England bowling coach position are, he says, similarly erroneous. "Troy Cooley phoned me up and asked me to apply for it. He said I'm entirely what England need. And I said, `Sorry, mate, I want to keep playing.'" But he is not ruling it out for the future.

"If they asked me to do it, I'd do it. I know every situation a bowler goes through, the mind-set, fields, thinking. And if they want me for that purpose, I'm willing. But I'm not a biomechanist. I'm a bowler and a good one." His teaching mantra is simple. "When a bowler's down, you get him back up; and when he's up, you keep him up. He don't need confusing. People say things to you for the sake of it. I absolutely hate it. And that's exactly how every other player thinks. But for some reason people think we like sitting down and looking at computers."

Gough may not like computers but he has a reputation for enjoying his statistics. One of his favourites is his combined Test and ODI wicket tally, the second highest for England behind Botham. "A lot of people actually don't know that," he says. "I've got over 450 wickets for England and I don't think I get the credit I deserve for that."

But targets have become a bit passé. "I'm the leading wicket-taker of all time in one-dayers and it's going to take somebody at least five or six years to get past me. There's nothing much more I can achieve, to be honest. That's not being big-headed. I don't know what else I can achieve."

Well, there is one thing: that big, shiny World Cup. And he thinks England have a chance of winning it, thanks to England's "two little diamonds", Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen. In the meantime Essex have been bowled out, the teams are coming off the field and Gough rises to go. Final question: who reverses it more, him or Simon Jones? He turns to a Leicestershire player. "Who reverses it more, mate, Gough or Simon Jones?" "There's only one bowler," comes the reply. "There you go," the departing Gough says over his shoulder. "There's only one bowler."