“Right, you’ve got some tatties to chip.” Matthew Hoggard is no longer bustling in to bowl an outswinger for England but he remains in full flow.
Now his playing arena is the kitchen, in particular his barbecue cookery school – Hoggy’s Grill. “I had Gilo [2005 team-mate Ashley Giles] in here and he said: ‘How do I chip a tattie?” Hoggard laughs, rolling his eyes.
Over the course of two hours on a crisp, sunny February afternoon, Hoggard’s enthusiasm and love for his new vocation is infectious.
He has built the perfect man cave. There are umpteen barbecues, beer taps (alcohol-free as well), a darts board, and air thick with the smell of caramelising meat. “We cook all sorts, vegan and veggie food too. We even do soufflés on the grill. When you say barbecue in the UK, people get the patties and the sausages from the supermarket. They burn the sausages. They get tasteless patties and pre-cook the chicken in the oven. I open people’s eyes saying, there’s nothing you can’t cook on a grill.”
The man who gave everything in his 67 Tests, running through a brick wall every time, taking 248 wickets and forever linked with that glorious 2005 summer, is now 48 and much more animated talking about his chimichurri recipe than what it was like to bowl to Matthew Hayden.
His cooking school, tucked in a garden centre overlooking Rutland Water, is taking off with bookings from corporate clients and punters who range from “school kids to Michelin-starred chefs and everybody in between”.
You can imagine they have a great time with Hoggy, a fun figure who has never taken himself seriously. But it does not take long once we sit down for an interview on a picnic table while our Tomahawk steak is cooking, and the chips, which passed muster, are frying in the rendered-down beef fat, for Hoggard to reveal how close he was to losing everything.
‘My wife was suicidal, really’
Rewind a couple of years and Hoggard was sucked into the Azeem Rafiq-Yorkshire racism scandal and found guilty by an England and Wales Cricket Board commission of four offences related to allegedly using racist or discriminatory language. He was fined £4,000 and banned from cricket. He had retired from the professional game years before but was turning out for his village team with son Ernie. He was even stopped from appearing in Masters matches for the Professional Cricketers’ Association.
He was cancelled, cast out by cricket and lost thousands of pounds of bookings for his business. The effect it had on his wife Sarah remains raw. “She was suicidal, really. I knew how the defibrillator worked in the village, and where it was, and I knew what pills she had in case I came downstairs and she wasn’t…” he trails off. “Yeah it was horrible, absolutely horrible.”
Hoggard spent years drifting after his retirement in 2013. “I tried my hand at foreign currency, insurance, coaching, commentary, didn’t fall in love with any of it. My missus got rather peed off with me and said: ‘Right, you need to find something you’re passionate about.’ I said, eating and drinking.”
He had learnt to barbecue while playing in South Africa so matched his hobby with a career, going on cooking courses and sourcing financial backing for his project, paying the bills with after-dinner speaking, which he continues to do with the Champions Speakers Agency. But Covid and, worse, the racism scandal put it all on the skids.
“It ruined me and my family for a year, maybe longer. We had so many deals lined up for this place, with big brands. As soon as that hit the fan, then it was ‘No, no we can’t work with you’, and I got cancelled massively.
“I didn’t want to leave the house. I didn’t want to go to a room that had more than two people in it, because I thought as soon as I walked in, everybody was judging me. Everybody was: ‘There comes the racist.’ I was a recluse. Gradually I came out, because people said to me behind closed doors they didn’t believe a word of it but they couldn’t say that in public because the race word had been used and everybody is scared. And that then has an effect on you. ‘You can’t work there, you can’t work there, you can’t work there.’”
Rafiq’s main complaints concerned his second stint at the club, long after Hoggard had left for Leicestershire. But he also alleged that, during his first spell at the club, Hoggard was part of a dressing-room culture in which racist terms were thrown around as banter. Michael Vaughan and John Blain were accused too and both have spoken to the Telegraph about the effect it had on their lives.
When Rafiq broke down in tears on television recalling incidents at Yorkshire, Hoggard called him. Rafiq later said that Hoggard had apologised; Hoggard’s recollection is different.
“The thing that really irks me is that he changed the narrative. You can shout from the hilltops and everything else but the history that he has remembered is different to the history I remember. The conversation I had privately on a phone call with him is completely different to the things he was saying in the press. It is a childish ‘he said, she said’ situation but the fact was, he was happy as Larry at the time [of his first spell at Yorkshire] and told me that it was some of his happiest days and then to hear what he said later on is tough. But you can’t defend yourself, you can’t win. Nobody can prove you did or didn’t.
“There’s a statement that he gave to the ECB [English and Wales Cricket Board] saying ‘I did not then and do not now’ think that Hoggy is racist. So I was like: ‘What am I doing here?’ I had a phone call from the PCA [Professional Cricketers’ Association] and the ECB saying we need to get you and Azeem in the same room so you can put away your differences. I said I speak to Azeem quite regularly. We haven’t got any problem.
“I phoned him up because I saw a team-mate crying on TV and saying that he nearly committed suicide going back into the changing room. I was his team-mate for a while. I did not know that he felt like that. People said not to phone him. But I phoned him up. I said: ‘All right Raf, I’m sorry you felt like that.’ He was thankful for the phone call. He said it was not that part of his life, it was his second stint at Yorkshire. The fact is he embraced the culture [when he played with Hoggard]. He was part of it. In fact, he was one of the worst ringleaders, a gobby 18-year-old from Barnsley, giving a lot of jip out. Doesn’t mean to say that would be acceptable now, but he changed the narrative.”
‘The way the ECB handled it was absolutely disgusting’
Ultimately, Hoggard was swept up in something he could not control. Rafiq too never expected it to blow up the way it did and leave a trail of lives ruined. “I don’t think he had any intentions of it getting that big, but it snowballed and snowballed and snowballed, people started writing shedloads of crap. It got to Parliament and you couldn’t sue him because he was under parliamentary privilege.
“The way the ECB handled it, I thought was absolutely disgusting, the way Parliament jumped on to it was hard. It was kids’ playground stuff but it got to Parliament! I grew up in the 1980s, 1990s. There’s things that were said then that make you cringe. Hi-de-Hi comes with a warning now. Little Britain, Harry Enfield and Chums, Ali G. They wouldn’t survive now because everything is very woke. Looking back on that changing room, there was nothing wrong with it. I was put under a bit of pressure from the PCA and the ECB to come out and issue an apology. I went ‘No’, because if I apologise, I admit that what happened in the changing room was wrong. I was adamant that what happened in that changing room wasn’t bullying, it wasn’t victimisation, it wasn’t racism. I wasn’t having it.”
After five years, Hoggard is getting the frustration off his barrel chest. “It was childish c--p that got blown out of proportion. I know Rafa had a tough time in his second spell with personal problems. I understand that. But his first stint was different.”
Hoggard chose not to contest the ECB hearing. Along with others, he pulled out of the process believing it was a foregone conclusion. “We knew we were going to be found guilty. We felt stitched up in a kangaroo court.”
‘My knees are carrying 25kg more than they should be’
The food is close to being cooked and the Yorkshire chat is winding down. He appears a little liberated by letting it all out. Hoggard, wearing his leather apron, now resembles a blacksmith as his huge ham-like hands delicately chop up asparagus with one of his sharp Japanese knives. He enthusiastically describes the importance of air flow in a barbecue, moving on from the Rafiq talk to something more enjoyable. “It’s a close-knit community, the cooking community. Everybody’s really nice and open. Have you tried this? Have you tried that? Have we done this? You bounce off people.”
The dark times are over. He has just started working at Stamford School as cricket coach and will be part of the 20-year 2005 celebrations this summer. He still plays for his village team, batting and standing at mid-off giving the youngsters the benefit of his wisdom. “I just tell them what the batter is thinking, give the captain tips on the field that they don’t always act on until the ball goes through the gap I pointed out.” Nothing has changed. Captains never listen to seamers.
Playing with his village team keeps him grounded and is a reminder of his middle age. He told the team coach a Darren Lehmann anecdote from the Yorkshire championship-winning campaign of 2001, when the club won the title for the first time in 33 years. Hoggard was stopped in his tracks when he received a blank look. “Ha. The guy said ‘I was a one-year-old in 2001.”
Time is not always kind to seamers, the body ruined from running in thousands of times and the temptation to eat what he cooks is tough to resist. It is why he only plays as a batsman and bowls a bit of off-spin. “I’m big, as you can see, the knees are carrying 25kg more than they should be, but I’ve got nothing that stops me from doing anything. I’m lucky that way.”
Stamford has given him a sense of belonging. “I put on the uniform and for the first time since I retired, I felt a sense of being part of a team and I was walking around Stamford proud as punch. It’s given me another purpose.”
And what about 2005? Hoggard was a part of that four-man attack with Steve Harmison, Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones. He chipped in with 16 wickets, including two crucial strikes at Trent Bridge of Michael Clarke and Adam Gilchrist either side of lunch on the final day. “Did I?” he says, struggling to remember. “Oh yeah, Gilchrist leg-before. I remember there was a stat saying I was the first seamer to get him out LBW. Me!” He proved it was no fluke in the next Test, removing Gilchrist again leg-before.
But it was his batting in that nail-biter, alongside Giles, that will be replayed this summer. “Everyone remembers the one shot which Ernie takes the mickey out of. “Daddy. How long did you play cricket for? Yeah, you were a bowler right. How does it feel that you’re only remembered for one shot.”
Again, Hoggard is being modest. Of his 16 wickets only three were tail-enders. He dismissed Hayden three times, starting with a cracking inswinger at Lord’s that cleaned up the biggest bully boy in an Australian shirt. “I had nightmares about him, because when I first went to Australia, Duncan Fletcher said: ‘Bowl your best ball at him.’ In my head, I bowled my best ball at him and it went for four. I bowled my best ball again, and it went for four. What am I gonna do now? I can vividly remember Chalky [Craig] White would come on, and he were quick you know, could bowl 90mph, and Haydos used to dance down the wicket, smack him straight back over his head for six.
“But at the end of the 2005 series Haydos said to me that the man we put on the drive that Duncan Fletcher came up with, really got in his head because he didn’t know whether to block it or hit it over the top so he was in two minds. Once you’re in two minds, you get into trouble, so that man on the drive was well thought out and it was nice to be able to get a little bit of revenge over him being a flat-track bully boy.”
The smell of sausages and Boerewors grilling means the food is nearly ready. “It is not sophisticated s--- this,” he says. But he is self-effacing. The steak was cooked “dirty”, which means directly on the coals. It carves like Hoggard running through a middle order on a cloudy day at Headingley and melts in the mouth. It is at this stage we tell him that Emma, the photographer, is vegan. “Ah, if I’d have known…”
It is getting darker and the garden centre is about to close, so we start to wrap up, and Hoggard loads the dishwasher. He quickly reels off his five top tips for barbecuing (use the best charcoal you can afford, cook to temperature not time, use the barbecue lid to retain and manage heat, be patient because the more time you cook the more flavour you impart and always have a meat thermometer handy).
The obvious question springs to mind. If he could rewind the clock, would he have become a professional chef instead? “No, I wouldn’t change a thing. I loved my career, and I was lucky enough to be standing in the field for England. I mean, how good is that? How lucky and privileged was I to be stood on that pitch as one of the best 11 players representing my country?”
This peaceful, rural patch of Rutland could not be further from the pressure cooker of an Ashes, that tense summer of 2005. But Hoggard seems happier in a strange way than he was then. “You’ve got fire, food and drinks and good times. Yeah, it’s really nice. There’s no rules at Hoggy’s Grill, apart from safety rules, but there’s no eating rules. Get stuck in.”
Simple. Just like bowling your best ball at the world’s top batsmen.
