Hoggy: Welcome to My World. Matthew Hoggard
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.
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.
