The harsh reality

Cricket may be the elegant game but it is also the harshest, governed by folk brought up to believe in their own absolute power.

Take Matthew Hoggard. Go on. I bet you had forgotten him. He was the workhorse in the England Ashes attack four years ago, their nightwatchman of choice and he had, by the standards of quick bowlers, a good cricket brain.

Hoggard has written a book which relates what went wrong at the end of his Test career. His wife Sarah had depression, he was thousands of miles away in New Zealand and, not surprisingly, his figures in the first Test read 26-2-111-1.

So, just as unremarkably, he found himself close to tears as he walked past Michael Vaughan on his way back to his mark. "I think I am going cuckoo," he told Vaughan. "I am doing a Tres." No-one ever forgets what happened to Marcus Trescothick. He got depression so badly he quit touring and Tests.

Instead cricket quit Hoggard, He was dropped for the second Test and, even when England were so desperate for his sort of bowling - at Headingley, on his home pitch - they called up Darren "Who?" Pattinson as Hoggard was on his way to the ground to act as a radio summariser.

All those sad moments might be written off as a blip in an otherwise glorious career save for the fact that no-one rang him, e-mailed him, faxed him or sent so much as a terse text, to ask how he and Sarah were until he was told that he was not to receive a contract this year. It will be no consolation to Hoggard to know he is among a big group of people who have been dropped without an afterthought.

A lady I know has trailed round the world in the hope of getting the permanent Test Match Special statistician's job one day and when Bill Frindall died she thought it might be offered.
Instead it has gone to another scorer. So far not a word from the BBC whose many executives have urged her to be patient; she knows just how Hoggard feels.

So too do three journalists who heard a rumour that they were to lose the contract they have relied on for many years and had to ring to find it it was true. Yes, another organisation has been appointed, they were told. They would have been less angry if someone had made a phone call that began "Sorry, but . . . "

It is, of course, the boss's right to choose but his measure will always be decided by the way he carries out his choice. Perhap that is why the poet wrote "April is cruellest month."