Matthew Hoggard

Predominantly a red-ball cricketer, Matthew Hoggard was an industrious swing bowler for the English national team. He partnered the likes of Steven Harmison and Simon Jones to dominate English cricket for a decade. Hoggard had the ability to shape the ball away from the right-hander at a good pace. He led the English bowling lineup at a young age and never looked back from thereon.

Hoggard came into the limelight when he took a clatter of wickets in 1999 First-Class season for his county, Yorkshire. On his Test debut against West Indies, he scalped two wickets on July 1st, 2000.  He picked up 18 wickets that season before he made his Test debut and went on to pick up a further 30 after that which cemented his place in the national squad.

Hoggard picked up the 34th hat-trick in Tests in his third match against West Indies at Bridgetown. The victims included Ramnaresh Sarwan, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, and Ryan Hinds. His world though, soon came crashing down with a huge thud, as he struggled on the hard tracks of Australia in 2002-03. It was his inability to find any movement off the pitch that proved to be his bane. 

One of Hoggard’s finest moments came when they arrived on the Indian shores to play a three-match Test series in 2006. He completed a fifer on the third day of the Test match on a rank turner in Nagpur. Like many international cricketers, Hoggard went through a phase where he doubted his abilities as a cricketer and went into depression.

After 17 years of professional cricket, Hoggard decided to retire from all forms of cricket in 2013. Hoggard finished with 786 First-Class wickets, 205 List A wickets and 51 T20 wickets in his career.

(As of May 2021)