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With his booming grin, zooming flipper and hard-to-pick wrong'un, Brad Hogg is Australia's most mercurial chinaman bowler since 'Chuck' Fleetwood-Smith in the 1930s. He announced himself to the world with a stupendous flipper to Zimbabwe's Andy Flower in |
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Name:George Bradley Hogg
Date of Birth: February 6, 1971
Place of Birth: Narrogin, Western Australia
Major teams: Australia, Warwickshire, Western Australia
Playing role: All-rounder
Batting style: Left-hand bat
Bowling style: Slow left-arm chinaman
Career statistics:
Test debut : India v Australia at Delhi - Oct 10-13, 1996
India v Australia at Delhi - Oct 10-13, 1996
ODI debut : Australia v Zimbabwe at Colombo (RPS) - Aug 26, 1996
Only Twenty20 Int:South Africa v Australia at Johannesburg - Feb 24, 2006
First-class span: 1993/94 - 2004/05
List A span : 1993/94 - 2005/06
Twenty20 span: 2004 - 2005/06
Profile:
With his booming grin, zooming flipper and hard-to-pick wrong'un, Brad Hogg is Australia's most mercurial chinaman bowler since 'Chuck' Fleetwood-Smith in the 1930s. He announced himself to the world with a stupendous flipper to Zimbabwe's Andy Flower in the 2003 World Cup. Flower leapt back, waited for the away-spin and then slumped, hideously bamboozled, as the ball fizzed straight through on to his stumps. Until that moment, Hogg's cricketing trajectory had been anything but straightforward. Like Stuart MacGill, he has spent years in the shadow of Shane Warne. He went to that World Cup hoping to pick Warne's brain, and unexpectedly found himself filling Warne's boots. His initial Test opportunity, at Delhi way back in 1996, also arose as Warne's stand-in. He made 1 and 4, took 1 for 69, and was promptly dumped for the next seven years and 78 games. No other Australian has waited so long between his first and second Tests; Alan Hurst, dropped for 30 matches, was the previous record-holder.
With his booming grin, zooming flipper and hard-to-pick wrong'un, Brad Hogg is Australia's most mercurial chinaman bowler since 'Chuck' Fleetwood-Smith in the 1930s. He announced himself to the world with a stupendous flipper to Zimbabwe's Andy Flower in the 2003 World Cup. Flower leapt back, waited for the away-spin and then slumped, hideously bamboozled, as the ball fizzed straight through on to his stumps. Until that moment, Hogg's cricketing trajectory had been anything but straightforward. Like Stuart MacGill, he has spent years in the shadow of Shane Warne. He went to that World Cup hoping to pick Warne's brain, and unexpectedly found himself filling Warne's boots. His initial Test opportunity, at Delhi way back in 1996, also arose as Warne's stand-in. He made 1 and 4, took 1 for 69, and was promptly dumped for the next seven years and 78 games. No other Australian has waited so long between his first and second Tests; Alan Hurst, dropped for 30 matches, was the previous record-holder.
During his time in the wilderness, Hogg learned to practise less and enjoy himself more. He began first-class life as a solid left-hand batsman, before flirting with chinamen in the nets one afternoon at the playful suggestion of his WA coach Tony Mann. His batting has fallen away, although he hit a Pura Cup century in 2004-05, but his jack-in-a-box fielding makes up for it. Hogg used to be a postman - "I do my round like a Formula One driver," he once bragged - and has the ever-present smile of a postie who's never known yappy dogs or rainy days. Boasting the Man-of-the-Series award against Bangladesh, Hogg passed 100 ODI wickets in April and still makes important and energetic contributions. Despite being a youthful 35, his days as an international are shortening and last summer he was the No. 2 Pura Cup option for his state behind Beau Casson. A second World Cup is looming but his future, like his past, hinges on the one-day availability of Shane Warne.
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