MATTHEW HOGGARD

'Matthew James Hoggard' MBE (born 31 December 1976, Leeds, Yorkshire) is an English cricketer.
The 6' 2" Hoggard is a right arm fast-medium bowler and right-handed batsman. He plays county cricket for Yorkshire and was first selected for the England cricket team in 2000, playing both Test cricket and One-day international cricket. However, in recent years he has been mainly viewed as a Test specialist by the England selectors, getting few opportunities in the shorter format.
Matthew Hoggard is a specialist orthodox swing bowler, and usually takes the new ball for England in Test cricket. Hoggard's primary role in the team is to utilise the shine on the new ball to test the technique of top-order batsmen against the swinging delivery. If, due to pitch or atmospheric conditions, the new ball does not swing he can be ineffective. When the ball does swing, however, Hoggard can be devastating, as at Johannesburg in 2005 (see below).
Hoggard took the 34th hat-trick in Test cricket on 3 April 2004, helping England to bowl out the West Indies for 94 in their second innings of the Third Test at Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados, taking England to their first series win in the West Indies since 1967-68, and becoming the first visiting team to win three Tests in a Caribbean series.
In the 4th Test Match of the series in South Africa in January 2005 Hoggard took 12 wickets for 205. Of Englishmen, only Johnny Wardle, who took 12 for 89 in Cape Town in 1956-7, has bettered his figures in South Africa since World War II. His match figures were England's best anywhere since Ian Botham's 13 for 106 against India in 1979-80.
Hoggard has a sound defensive batting technique, but is not known for scoring runs, averaging only 7.40 with the bat. He can block up an end for the batsman at the other end to score, and is also used as a nightwatchman. His most famous innings was the 8 not out he scored with Ashley Giles against Australia in the fourth Test at Trent Bridge in the 2005 Ashes series, which included a well-executed cover drive for four off a Brett Lee full toss, as England struggled to a three-wicket win in reaching a low target of 129 to take a 2-1 series lead. His highest score was a swashbuckling 38 against the West Indies in August 2004.
In the 2006 New Year's Honours List Hoggard was awarded the MBE for his role in the successful Ashes tournament. He was also named as one of five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in April 2006.
On March 6, 2006, Hoggard was officially ranked the 4th best Test match bowler in the world. This was as a result of his Man of the Match performance for England against India in the First Test match at Nagpur in March, 2006. On 13 May, 2006 he became the tenth England bowler to take 200 Test wickets.

Hoggard's most recent triumph with ball came in The Second Ashes Test at Adelaide in December 2006, taking 8 wickets in the match with first innings figures of 7/109, in very unfavourable bowling and especially swing bowling conditions, though England still lost.
Hoggard missed the fifth test in Sydney with a side-strain. It ended a run of 40 consecutive tests.^[1] As of July 2007, Hoggard is sixth in the list of all-time English Test wicket-takers with 240 from 64 matches.
In May 2007 Hoggard's wife Sarah gave birth to a baby boy called Ernie, weighing in at 7 lbs 10 oz.

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1. Fifth Test, day one as it happened


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