‘He gives you it straight. If he thinks you’re a pillock, he’ll tell you. He won’t ask for anything that he wouldn’t do himself, that’s the way he is. Hoggy is Hoggy.’

David Byas, former Yorkshire captain

Fore Paw-word

By the HOGGY DOGGIES, BILLY the Doberman and MOLLY the Border Collie

BILLY: So what’s all this about, then?

MOLLY: Apparently, this is the bit of a book where important people or animals are asked to say nice things about the bloke on the front cover.

BILLY: About him? Why I should say nice things about him? All he ever does is shout at me.

MOLLY: That’s because you play too rough half the time, Billy, and you don’t do as you’re told.

BILLY: Whenever I try to play with you, you don’t give me the time of day. You can be a cantankerous old bitch sometimes.

MOLLY: You forget that I’m an old lady. If I was five years younger, I’d still be able to run rings round you.

BILLY: Like to see you try. Anyway, I still don’t see why I should be so nice about the bloke. What does he ever do for us?

MOLLY: He takes us for lots of long walks.

BILLY: I’ll give him that.

MOLLY: Even when it’s raining. And he feeds us most of the time.

BILLY: Well, yes, you’ve got a point. Sometimes I want to bite him, but I’m worried that the walks and the food might stop if I do. Shall we gang up on him and both bite him?

MOLLY: He’s in charge, Billy boy, whether we like it or not.

BILLY: But if he’s so tough and reckons he’s top dog, why does he always send me outside first if he hears a noise in the garden? I can never understand that.

MOLLY: Strange creatures, these humans, Billy. I’m still trying to work them out.

BILLY: They must be strange if they want to read a book about him. What’s so interesting about him?

MOLLY: Apparently he’s quite good at some weird game they play. They throw a red ball, someone hits it and they chase it around a field. It goes on for hours.

BILLY: Well, I chase a ball around a field with him all the time and I’m much better at it than him. This book should be all about me.

MOLLY: I’m inclined to agree with you, Billy. But like I said, he’s in charge.

BILLY: He talks a load of rubbish as well. He makes up words of his own that nobody else ever uses, words like ‘ridonculous’.

MOLLY: Yes, I’ve always wondered what that means. Any ideas?

BILLY: Haven’t got a clue. Do you think they’re all as odd as him?

MOLLY: I very much doubt it.

Introduction

Go on, admit it, you turned to the photo pages first, didn’t you?

Before I had the chance to say even a word in my defence, you plunged straight into the middle of the book to check out my dodgy haircuts from when I was younger. Don’t worry, though; everybody does it, me included. Those embarrassing old photos are sometimes the best bit of the book, aren’t they? I tried to get the publishers to let me have a book full of pictures, but they insisted I put a few words in here as well. Sorry about that.

Anyway, at least you have now made it as far as my first page. I bet there are some buggers who’ll pick up the book in a shop, have a quick look at the dodgy photos, then put the book back down again with no intention whatsoever of buying it. I’m thinking of putting on a disguise one day and spending a few hours hanging out in a bookshop to see how many people do that.

When we first started talking about writing a book, it was suggested that I should try to give the reader a feel for what it would be like to sit next to me in the England dressing-room. That’s what these books are supposed to do, I was told; to give a flavour of what it is really like to play for your country.

But I didn’t think that would really be fair, because most people don’t find it a particularly pleasant experience to sit alongside me for the duration of a five-day Test match. I’ve got very smelly kit, for starters. My cricket bag begins a Test match in a pretty disorganised state, with everything just thrown in. And by the end of the fifth day there will be stuff strewn everywhere and it’ll take me an age to find all my kit when it’s time to go home. It’s not a pretty sight, so I think I’ll spare you that experience.

Actually, one thing about sitting next to me in the dressing-room that may be worth sharing is my vast store of completely useless information. Sitting on the balcony during a Test match, watching our batsmen pile on the runs, the conversation may flag from time to time. And to while away a bit of time, I have been renowned in the England team for nudging whoever is sitting next to me and producing a random fact to start a discussion of some kind.

Such as: ‘Did you know that peanuts are used in the manufacture of dynamite?’

‘Really, Hoggy? How interesting.’

‘And did you know that peanuts aren’t actually nuts?’

‘Well, I never did.’

Andrew Strauss has always been especially keen on my little factoids. He says that my ability to produce these pearls of wisdom is evidence of my HIDDEN INTELLIGENCE, however well concealed it might be. But I only know so much rubbish because I’ve got some very good trivia books in the loo at home. How dare he call me intelligent?

So you might find your self being nudged at various points during the book and being offered a little HogFact or two. Prepare to be amazed. Other than that, this book is a bit of a higgledy-piggledy ramble through my career, with the odd stop off for refuelling along the way (the way a good walk should be). The wife has blagged a chapter or two, because it wouldn’t seem right to tell a tale about my life without a contribution from her. She’s never been known to miss out on the opportunity to put her two penn’orth in before. And also, as a special treat, if he’s a really good boy, our little lad, Ernie, might even get to say a few words.

Originally, I’d wanted to throw a bit of scandal into the book and tell you about such scrapes as the time the entire England team and ended up ! But lawyers will be lawyers and the wise men in wigs told me to tone it down a touch.

If you find you’re getting bored at any point during this book, I’ve scribbled a few puzzles between Chapters Two and Three to give you a break. I’ll understand if you feel the need to recharge the brain cells for a while before diving back into my deep and meaningful writing. And if you’re still struggling after the puzzles, well, you could go away and find someone to tell about a startling new fact that you’ve just learned.

Failing that, you can always turn back to have a look at those dodgy haircuts, just one more time.

1 My Family and Other Animals by Matthew ’oggard, aged 8½

Hello My name is Matthew and I an eight narf years old. I was born on 31st December 1976 in St Mary’s Hospitull and I go to Lowtown Primary School. I live in Pudsey in Yorkshire quite near Leeds and Bradford. They named that teddy bear on Children in Need after Pudsey. I don’t know why. I’m not really into teddy bears myself. I prefer animals and insects.

When we do show-and-tell at school I like to take in something slimy or stinky. Once I took a slow-worm that I brought back from camping with mum and dad. I showed it to the boys and girls in my class and everybody just went: ‘EEEUUURRGHHHH! IT’s A SNAKE!’ Especially the girls. So I said: ‘No it’s not. Don’t be so daft. It’s only a slow-worm.’

I’m dead lucky cos we’ve got some fields over our back wall where I can go and look for animals and insects. I love exploring and the fields at the back of our house are brilliant. We call them the blue fields cos some of the soil is blue. It’s summat to do with the chemicals on them. My dad told me what but I’ve forgotten now.

There are two marker posts in the blue fields and Mum says I’m not allowed to go past them. At the side of the marker posts there is a meadowy bit where there are loads and loads of insects. Over the other side there is a big old gas cylinder and the banana. The banana is a big steep dip where bigger boys ride their bikes.

Past the banana there is a flat bit where you can see a family of foxes. I like to go and watch the big foxes playing with the baby foxes. The baby foxes are called cubs. Just below the flat bit there is a pond. Sumtimes I find a frog or a toad from the pond and take it home. I run into the kitchen and shout: ‘Mum, Mum, look what I’ve found!’ And she’ll say: ‘That’s very nice, Matthew. But please will you take it out of the kitchen.’

I’ve brought all sorts of animals home from the blue fields. I’ve brought toads and frogs and voles and fieldmice and worms. But my favourite are devil’s coach-horses. These are little beetles that chomp on worms for their tea. I’ve got lots of them in an old milk churn at home. Dad has taken the top off the milk churn and I put loads of soil and stones in there for my devil’s coach-horses. I give then worms to eat and watch the worms get munched up. It’s great. I think I want to be a vet when I grow up.

I also like dogs and cats. I like going up to dogs and giving them a stroke. Mum always says: ‘Be careful Matthew, they might bite.’ But I say: ‘No it won’t bite me, Mum. Dogs like me.’ We have had some cats as pets but they kept dying. Now we’ve got Smudge and I think he’ll be okay.

My Dad is a teacher. He teaches bigger boys to do sums. My Mum used to be a lollipop lady but now she works at a school as well. She works with the science teachers and she wears a white coat. As well as my mum and dad I live with my older Sister karen and Julie. I like being the youngest cos when karen and Julie fall out they both start being really nice to me and trying to get me on their side.

Sumtimes I think my sisters wish I was a girl. When it’s fancy dress at school they always make me wear stupid stuff. Like being a St Trinian girl which makes me look a right Prat. Last time I went to school dressed as a St Trinian I played rugby at morning break and laddered my tights.

The other thing that I love to do apart from looking for animals is Playing games with my dad. We play loads and loads of different games with balls. We play chuck and catch, French cricket, Frisbee, rugby and football. We go up to the rugby posts at the top field sumtimes and throw of kick a rugby ball and try to hit the crossbar and posts. Dad gives us points when we hit and we see who can get the most points. We also play a lot in our back garden but we’ve got to be careful there cos we’re always knocking plants over and Mum gets cross.

I always really want to beat my dad when we’re playing games and he always really wants to beat me. He wins most of the time cos he’s a grown-up. Sumtimes I win and I love it when I do.

I like it when we play proper cricket. But bowling is really difficult. I’m good at standing still and bowling and I’m good at running in super fast. But it’s tricky doing them both together. I run in really fast then hop and skip and jump but I never know where my feet are so I can’t bowl when I’ve stopped hopping and skipping and jumping. I get really angry sumtimes.

So one Sunday morning Dad decided to sort out my bowling. It took us ages and ages and ages. I just ran in and jumped and bowled loads and loads of times and I tried not to do any hopping or skipping. Run jump bowl run jump bowl run jump bowl. I got it wrong a lot but Dad told me to keep trying. Suddenly just before it was time to go in for our lunch I got good at it. So I tried it a few more times and I was still good at it.

Now I really like bowling. It’s my favourite bit of cricket. And Dad says that when I bowl the ball swings a lot.

I don’t really know what that means but it sounds cool.

WHY CRICKET IS A
BATSMAN’S GAME

1. EFFORT

They stand there and hit balls for a living, and run when it’s actually going to be worth something to them. A bit like someone that won’t get out of bed unless they’re being paid for it. Bowlers put more effort into bowling a dot ball than batsmen do into hitting a six.

2. FIELDING POSITIONS

Where do batsmen normally field? In the slips, chatting away while the bowlers do the running around elsewhere. If you’re fielding at fine leg and the batsman snicks a ball through the slips for four, the slips just turn round and look at you to fetch it, even though it’s probably closer to them. You’ve just stood there for twenty overs, you f***ing fetch it.

3. PRACTICE SESSIONS

Once they’ve had their turn to bat, some batsmen can’t be bothered to bowl at us tail-enders. And if they are gracious enough to turn their arms over, they just stroll up and bowl some filthy off-spin.

4. CAPTAINCY

Captains are almost always batsmen, so they don’t know what it’s like to be a bowler, to be aching and groaning at the end of a hard day. Can you give us one more over, Hoggy? You can’t ever say no.

5. SMALL STUMPS

Let’s face it, not many dismissals come from a brilliant ball that pitches leg and hits off. Most batsmen get themselves out, through boredom or a daft shot. If we had bigger stumps, there would be more genuine dismissals for the deserving, long-suffering bowlers.

2 Gardens, Gags and Games

In case anyone is wondering, I never did quite make it as a vet. All those ball games I was playing rather got in the way and I ended up doing that for a living instead.

So if you’re a dog-lover who saw the front of this book and thought it was for you, well, the dogs will be featuring from time to time, but I’m afraid there will be a bit of cricket along the way as well.

If you really don’t like cricket, you can always look up Billy and Molly in the index and skip to those bits. And there’s always the photos for you to have a good laugh at. Everyone likes looking at those.

Anyway, sorry if you don’t feel you’ve had your money’s worth.

It’s mainly my dad’s fault, I think, that I became quite so keen on cricket. He hadn’t played much himself—the odd staff match here and there—but there was hardly a sport that he wasn’t interested in. And there really was no end to those games we played together for years when I was a lad.

Wherever we went, we would take a ball with us and Dad would think up some game or other and invent a set of rules to turn it into a contest. When we were up at the top field by the rugby posts, throwing a tennis ball or kicking a rugby ball at the crossbar, Dad would devise a points system of some sort to turn it into a proper game. We got one point for hitting a post below the crossbar, two for hitting a post above the crossbar and a jackpot of five points for hitting the crossbar itself.

I remember the first time I was given a hard ball. My nan and grandad had bought it for me from a flea market for 20p and I spent ages bowling with it in the back garden. I was desperate to have a bat against it as well, so Dad took me up to Crawshaw playing fields, where they had a concrete wicket covered with green rubber matting, which made the surface quite bouncy.

I was really excited about going up there and I ran up the dirt path that led up the side of the field. I couldn’t wait to play on that pitch with a PROPER HARD BALL. We were going to start with one of us bowling and the other one catching, just to get a feel for the ball, so Dad got ready to bowl and I got ready to catch. He ran in, turned his arm over and the ball pitched halfway down the wicket. Because of the green matting, it bounced a bit more than I expected and it leapt up and smacked me right in the chops. There was blood everywhere, I bawled my eyes out and we went straight home. So much for playing with a hard ball.

That might not have been quite as much fun as I had hoped, but the best cricket games I played with my dad were with a red Incrediball down at Post Hill, a short walk from our house. This was an overgrown field with trees all around it, and it was the place we used to go when I got my first dog, Pepper (there’s another dog to look up in the index). I’d been pestering Mum for years to let me have a dog and she finally let me when I was 13. Pepper was a crossbreed, part Staffordshire bull terrier, part Labrador, with a few more breeds thrown in as well, but he looked very much like a Rottweiler.

He was a lovely dog, very loyal and friendly, and he generally did as he was told. I trained him to fetch my socks and shoes for me, and when we went camping on a weekend (which was almost every weekend in summer), Pepper would bed down in my tent alongside me. We were very good pals. But probably the best thing about him was that he absolutely loved to chase and fetch a ball. So when we took him for walks down to Post Hill, Pepper became our fielder. Wherever we hit the ball, he’d sprint after it and bring it back to us. He was an absolutely brilliant fielder. He made Jonty Rhodes look like Monty Panesar.

Those games at Post Hill with my dad (and occasionally my mum) were incredibly well organised and we developed hundreds of rules over the years. As a bat, we used a stick that I’d found in the woods and ripped the bark off, about the size of a baseball bat. I think it was bent in the middle as well. Batting was a tricky business, because the pitch was nowhere near flat, there were stones all over it, so one ball could bounce over your head, then the next could roll along the floor.

Not only that, but we had the biggest set of stumps in the world. Whoever was batting would stand in front of a sapling that must have been three feet wide and six feet high. That was our stumps. So if Dad bowled me a bouncer, there wasn’t much point in me ducking underneath it because I’d be bowled out. And if the ball hit me on the shoulder, I could be lbw. As I said, batting was far from easy.

If you managed to connect with the ball, and sent it flying into the trees for Pepper to fetch, there were some trees that were out and other trees that were six. If you hit the ball over a track behind the bowler, that was six as well. And if you edged the ball, there was a bigger tree behind the sapling that served as a slip cordon. If you nicked it past the tree, you were okay, but if it so much as clipped a leaf, you were out.

As you can imagine, wickets fell at regular intervals in this game, so we played ten-wicket innings. I would bat until I’d been out ten times, then Dad would do the same and try to beat me. Fifty or sixty† all out could well be a match-winning score. I’m not sure who won the most games. I think that I did, but my dad would probably say that he did. Actually, why don’t I go and ask him? Or better still, I’ll ask my mum as well. I’ve a feeling that we might need an independent adjudicator.

Me:	Mum, who do you think won the most games when we played down at Post Hill?
Dad:	I definitely won the most games.
Me:	I wasn’t asking you.
Mum:	Oh, I don’t know, it probably ended up about even. But it was always very competitive. Not just when you were playing cricket, either. Whatever you played together was competitive, even if you were just whanging a ball to each other on the beach. Most people just do that to play catch, but with you two there was always some sort of competition involved.
Dad:	That’s the way it should be. All games are competitive.
Me:	Did we have many arguments about the rules?
Dad:	No, because I was the sole umpire, so there were never any arguments. You just had to put up with that.
Me:	I must have won most games, though. You were useless.
Dad:	I wasn’t, I was absolutely brilliant. Unorthodox, maybe, but brilliant all the same.
Me:	You couldn’t bat for toffee. And you bowled like my mother.
Mum:	Erm, excuse me, Matthew. When I went down to Post Hill with you, I was going to walk the dog. I didn’t want to have to play cricket as well.
Me:	It was boring playing with you, Mum. I could just smack it anywhere when you bowled.
Mum:	Cheeky sod.
Dad:	My bowling was good enough for you most of the time, anyway.
Me:	That was because half the time you didn’t bowl it, you threw it.
Dad:	You’ve got a point there. I did throw it from time to time.
Me:	Yes, whenever there was a danger of me beating you.
Dad:	Well, if you’ve got a lad who can hit every ball when I bowled it, what was the point? I wanted to keep challenging you. And I didn’t just throw it, by the way, I sometimes threw it with sideways movement, so it spun as well. It was a good test for you.
Me:	Especially when the stumps were six feet high. And I bet when you were batting you wished that you’d never sorted out my bowling action in the garden that time.
Dad:	No, that was well worth the trouble. It was hard work, it took all Sunday morning, but we got there in the end. I got the run and jump sorted out, then I asked Bob Richardson about some of the more technical stuff. Bob taught at my school and he used to play in the Bradford League, so I’d ask him during the day about how to use the front arm, or how to hold the ball, and then I’d come home and tell you about it in the evening. You were a quick learner, but Bob deserves some credit.
Me:	Yes, he deserves some credit for me bowling you out all the time.
Mum:	Anyway, there were never any hard feelings when the two of you came back. You always seemed to have had a good time. And at least when you were playing down there, you weren’t throwing the ball against the kitchen wall or destroying the garden.
Me:	Oh yes, I smashed a lot of plants down, didn’t I?
Mum:	You smashed everything, even in the bits you weren’t supposed to go near. Anything with a head on it would come off. The daffodils never got near flowering, the gladioli never got a chance to come out. In the end, I just got some very low plants that didn’t have heads on them, so it didn’t make a difference whether they were hit or not.
Me:	I remember one time with the flowers as though it happened in slow motion. It was in the part of the garden that I wasn’t allowed to go in, but I’d been throwing the ball against the wall and bowled myself a wide, juicy half-volley. I really smacked the ball and it went directly towards some really nice flowers that you had. I knew as soon as I hit it that I was in bother. The ball seemed to travel in slow motion and it went ‘Pop’, straight against the flower, and the head fell straight off and tumbled to the ground.
Mum:	Funnily enough, I remember that as well.
Me:	Whenever I knocked the head off a flower, I’d pick it up and stick it back on top of the leaves, so it looked as though the flower hadn’t come off. I just hoped you wouldn’t notice.
Mum:	I always noticed, Matthew. Always.

I’m not sure that leaves us any the wiser about who won the most games, but this is my book so I get the final word. I won the most games, but I might not have done if Dad hadn’t sorted my bowling action out in the garden. That seems fair enough.

Once I had got the hang of jumping rather than hopping, I used to spend ages practising in the garden, running in down the side of the greenhouse and bowling into a netting fence that we had. I had to be careful, though, because we lived in a semi-detached house and there was another garden right next door. I once bowled one that hit a ridge, bounced over the fence and smashed next door’s garage window.†

Mum and Dad still live in the same house and I was round there recently having a look at the garden, and it occurred to me that the layout there is probably responsible for a quirk that I have in my bowling action. I have a bit of a cross-action, in that my front foot goes across to the right too far when I bowl, across my body (compared with how a normal person bowls, anyway). It actually helps me to swing the ball and has helped in particular against left-handers, enabling me to get closer in to the stumps bowling over the wicket, giving me a better chance of getting an lbw.

In the layout opposite, the main set of arrows from top to bottom show my run-up and pitch in the garden. The two-way arrows towards the bottom show where I threw the ball against the kitchen wall and smacked it back across the patio. You can see there wasn’t a straight line coming down from the side of the greenhouse to the fence where the wickets were on the other side of the garden, so I had to adjust and come across myself in my action. It had never occurred to me until recently, but that could well have led to the way I have bowled ever since. So perhaps every time I dismissed Matthew Hayden when I was playing for England, I should have been thanking my dad for putting the greenhouse in such a daft place.

Not so far from our house, about a ten-minute walk (fifteen if you had a heavy bag), was our local cricket club, Pudsey Congs, which is where I went to start playing some proper cricket. I started going down there at the age of 11 and, to begin with, we played eight-a-side, sixteen overs per team, with four pairs of batsmen going in for four overs at a time, and losing eight runs every time one of them was out. From the first time I went, I was really keen, and I think Mum was even keener to have me out of the house. Soon enough, the cricket club became the centre of my little universe.

12 Növ.

Hoggy: Welcome to My World

Bu kitabı axtaranlar oxuyur

Dedication

What you’ll find inside …

Fore Paw-word

Introduction

1 My Family and Other Animals by Matthew ’oggard, aged 8½

WHY CRICKET IS ABATSMAN’S GAME

2 Gardens, Gags and Games

WHY CRICKET IS A
BATSMAN’S GAME