Whatever happened to the word eccentric? It’s such a glorious expression of that most resolutely wilful English character trait. Yet somehow it seems to have fallen out of use, replaced by the forced artificiality of ‘zany’, ‘wacky’ and ‘mad’. Sod television, that’s dumbing down of modern society for you right there.

Well, I’m reviving the word eccentric for Matthew Hoggard. He deserves it, especially after the publication of Hoggy – Welcome To My World.

“He’s just a bit silly. He rings you up and leaves daft messages and silly noises on your phone. It’s just madness. He’s a good lad though.” – Ashley Giles

“He gives you it straight. If he thinks you’re a pillock, he’ll tell you. He won’t ask for anything that he wouldn’t do himself, that’s the way he is. Hoggy is Hoggy.“ – David Byas

It’s those two quotes that serve as the book’s opening. And it’s that impression – of a straight-talking, hard-working man, who at times is just a little bit daft – that the remaining three hundred plus pages confirm.

It’s the silliness that leaves the initial impression, with the scribbled cartoons of the cover and inner pages immediately catching the eye. That mischievous sense of fun permeates the entire book, taking it on a tightrope walk between the usual content of a sporting memoir and the more frivolous excesses of a comedy compendium. Whether the initial idea for this approach came from subject or publisher is probably irrelevant; it suits both equally well. As for Hoggard it’s a genuine reflection of his outlook on life, and for HarperCollins a damn useful way of making it stand out in a crowded marketplace.

For the most part the humour works. Ok, Hoggard is no P.G. Wodehouse or Douglas Adams, who is? But the scrawled drawings and irreverent asides dotted throughout the text will be familiar to anyone who’s read the autobiographies of Spike Milligan. And, as with Milligan, the child-like playfulness can be endearing or baffling, depending on the reader, depending on the reader’s mood.

There’s a definite suspicion that some of the filler content between chapters is exactly that, filler. A two page spread on crickets ‘Hardest Hitters’ for example, could have quite comfortably occupied no more than a paragraph had its content been included amongst the main text. But whilst there are sections designed to be mere throw-away asides, they do serve to break-up the main body of the book, giving it a relaxed jokey counter-point to some of the more serious issues Hoggard tackles.

For whilst it might be the humorous aspects of Welcome to my World that catch the eye when browsing the shelves of your local bookstore, it’s the honesty with which Hoggard talks about the difficulties of his recent personal life that have caught the eye of the media.

There’s a hint here of Coming Back To Me, the Marcus Trescothick autobiography, as Hoggard relates the problems he and his wife Sarah had in conceiving, the strain that put on their marriage, and the subsequent knock-on effect to his career. The depth of detail might not be quite the same, but the honesty is, with Sarah herself contributing a chapter from her viewpoint.

Most of the revelations come as a surprise, as the turmoil Hoggard was feeling stayed below the surface of his normal outgoing personality. Although the admission that at times during the 2008 season his heart wasn’t quite in his work will, with the benefit of hindsight, make sense to a lot of Yorkshire supporters.

The framework for the honesty and humour of the book is actually a fairly standard career bio, if one that is often told with tongue in cheek. It also highlights the impression I’ve held for a long time, that whilst Hoggard might play the fool, in reality he’s anything but. As his observations on the game, in particular on modern coaching methods are well worth reading. Beneath the surface noise of gentle mocking here’s a player capable of sifting out useful information from the surfeit of new ideas coaches seem eager to introduce. It’s an ability to weigh up which information has actual value that Hoggard might dismiss out of hand as common sense, but in reality is the sort of intelligence many an England captain has failed to bring back with them from university.

Given the chance, Hoggard would have probably made a fairly astute captain himself, although God knows what kind of sound bites he’d supply the press with, and the team tactics board would have ended up looking like the decent into lunacy…

Verdict: If the purpose of a sporting autobiography is to merely detail the ups and downs of an athletes life and career, then Welcome to my World does a reasonable job, being as it is more edited highlights than a Boswellian recording of a life’s minutia. But if you believe in a slightly freer interpretation, that it should actively and accurately reflect the personality of its subject, then in this case a bullseye has been hit.

(Book Review: By kind permission, Kenny Shovel)