It might be him or me, but you've just got to hold your nerve."If Hoggard were to hold his nerve as well as his line sufficiently well, the notebooks and the cameras this time will be following him all the way back to Yorkshire.. The 2005 Ashes will begin at Lord's at 10.30am on Thursday. There has been a later start to the series - by an hour, on 21 July 1890 - although the probability is that even with W G Grace as England's captain the sense of expectancy was not quite as great. England have taken nearly all before them, losing only one of 18 matches, and almost as importantly have found the tools to dig themselves out of deep, dark holes.Each session, each match, each series has been important in its own right, but all have been conducted with this challenge in mind. Michael has put the fun back and made life easier, because there's no fear of failure.

There's no grumpiness, he's very stable, and although we've always been team-mates rather than friends I have grown to like him more and more as the years have gone by."Hoggard knows that the Australian batsmen will target him with a new ball in his hand His plan is uncomplicated. "You have got to do what you have been doing to take wickets. I know that Matthew Hayden is going to come after me, but if I'm bowling the right lines and lengths then it's a bigger risk for him. Partly this is because he loathes the limelight, partly because it suits his personality to defer to others, partly it is Yorkshire bluntness. Self-deprecation is not brittleness.The Yorkshireman in him ensures he stands up for himself. No member of the side ragged the former captain, Nasser Hussain, more than Hoggard.He is wary of those he dislikes, and when he was first in the England side he acted the goat a bit too much for the liking of some A defensive mechanism was interpreted as smart-alecry. It still shows occasionally.Of the Fletcher-Hussain combo which effectively relaunched English cricket, he cannot speak highly enough "They started the revival.

I have got a lot of respect for Duncan as a coach, he gets into your mind. If you ask him a question he'll say, 'Leave it with me' and then come back two hours later with a theory He has theories on everything."Nasser did wonders He instilled a discipline, a belief, the right attitude. He got the right people and he stood up and had endless fights with the ECB for what he and Fletch thought was right He was forever fighting the system. He took everything to heart."Things are different under Vaughan, whom Hoggard has known since they were boys together at Yorkshire.

"I only knew Michael as a player, and it was a learning curve having a new captain," he said "I found I transferred pretty easily. So we need to do a good job at Lord's and put them under pressure early doors."Hoggard has a neat line in self-deprecation ("I bowled like a bag of spanners against Bangladesh"). You talk a good game, but as soon as the shit hits the fan you go down'. He is one of only four players to have been ever-present in England's run of 18 Test matches in which they have won 14, lost only one and secured five consecutive series victories. Two of the others are Harmison and Flintoff (the fourth is Marcus Trescothick), permitting direct comparison.Hoggard does not suffer. He has 78 wickets to Harmison's 80 and Flintoff's 67, and he has taken them at a better rate than either. In South Africa, when Harmison was out of form, Hoggard was regularly England's best bowler.The remarkable feat at the Wanderers was reward for persistence, but he had already shown that he could do a job when the ball was not swinging.