Hoggard's dropping was ruthless, but life goes on

London: In all my years involved in cricket I don't think I've ever seen an international cricketer of long standing and considerable achievement have his career at the top level terminated so ruthlessly as Matthew Hoggard.

If it came as a shock to him, ("Right, cheers," was the single numb response he gave Michael Vaughan when the England captain called him aside in the viewing area at the Basin Reserve in Wellington before the second Test early in 2008) then we hacks, with hindsight, got the merest hint from Vaughan when he talked of "changes" in the plural in the aftermath of the hideous England debacle in the opening Test in Hamilton.

Steve Harmison was always going to be dropped, no batsman had been outstandingly worse than any other and it did not look like one of them would go, so the only option was Hoggard. Vaughan has explained it as the bowler being down on his pace for the demands of a three-man seam attack, and short of confidence.

Home stresses

Hoggard, with considerable candour, says if he hadn't been at his best in that and the previous Test in Sri Lanka, then he was further distracted by knowledge of the depression being suffered by his wife Sarah, who was about to join him on tour.

With tears welling he told Vaughan, while in the middle of an over in Hamilton: "I think I'm going cuckoo, I'm doing a Tres." He thinks that single off-guard admission that the black dog which visited his friend and colleague Marcus Trescothick was also barking at his own family wellbeing did not help his cause, but has never questioned Vaughan on it.

The ruthless nature of his dropping does not mean it was the wrong decision. But it was unusual in that the natural turnover of a side is generally dictated by injury and retirement, rather than selectorial intuition.

A first interpretation may have been that once he got his confidence back, he would return. It happened with Harmison. But the Wellington Test saw the renaissance of Jimmy Anderson and the beginning of the rise of Stuart Broad. There have been times since when we've watched England struggle and perhaps wondered what he might have done, but the reality has been that the world moved swiftly on, Anderson and Broad have begun to flourish, and the way has been cleared for others such as Graham Onions.