Michael Vaughan

Michael Paul Vaughan (born 29 October 1974) is an English cricket commentator and former cricketer who played all forms of the game.

A batsman and occasional off spinner, Vaughan began playing professional cricket aged 17, and captained the England Under-19 cricket team on tour against Sri Lanka in 1993/94 and at home against India in 1994.

He made his Test debut for England in South Africa in November 1999, becoming the 600th player to represent his country at Test cricket.

He came to the crease for his first Test innings with England in the perilous state of two wickets down for two runs; within an over this had become four wickets down for two runs.

He made a composed 33, and shared a partnership of 56 with Andrew Flintoff.

In May 2001 he scored his first Test century against Pakistan at Old Trafford.

In December 2001, in Bangalore, Vaughan became the second Englishman, after Graham Gooch, and the 7th and most recent player in Test match history, to be given out handled the ball in Tests: on 64, he brushed away a ball from Sarandeep Singh, and was given out on appeal.

He was ranked one of the best batters in the world following the 2002/03 Ashes, in which he scored 633 runs, including three centuries.

In 2002, Vaughan scored 900 runs in seven Tests against Sri Lanka and India.

This included 115 against Sri Lanka at Lord's during the first Test.

During the series against India he scored a duck and 100 during the first Test at Lord's, and his highest innings score to date of 197 against India during the second Test at Trent Bridge, Nottingham where he also took 3 wickets including the prized scalp of Sachin Tendulkar and during the fourth Test he scored 195 against India, again falling just short of a double-century.

Later that year the English cricket team travelled to Australia for the 2002–03 Ashes series.

It was here that Vaughan's career seemed to launch.

He started poorly in the first Test at Brisbane with scores of 33 and 0, but in the second Test in Adelaide he would improve on this with 177 and 41.

During the fourth Test at Melbourne he made an aggressive 145.

He served as England captain for the test team from 2003 to 2008, the one-day international team from 2003 to 2007, and was the first Twenty20 England captain from 2005 to 2007.

He represented Yorkshire in the domestic arena.

Vaughan was a right-handed opening batter, who forged a successful England partnership with Marcus Trescothick, though he often batted in the middle order for England.

Vaughan married Nichola Shannon (a native of Northern Ireland) on 27 September 2003.

The couple have three children.

Vaughan captained England in 51 Tests, winning 26 (a then-national record) and losing 11; England won all seven home Tests of the 2004 summer under Vaughan, and the pinnacle of his captaincy career came with a 2–1 victory in the 2005 Ashes, England's first Ashes victory in 18 years (since 1986/87).

However, a recurring knee injury, his decision to move down the batting order to accommodate other opening batsmen (Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook) and the pressures of captaincy took their toll on Vaughan's batting during the latter part of his career: in Tests, he averaged 50.95 when not captain, and 36.02 as captain.

In 2005 he moved from Dore in Sheffield to Baslow in Derbyshire.

In 2006, he bought a house valued at £1 million on a luxury golf course development in Barbados and another on Isla Margarita.

Vaughan announced his retirement from first-class cricket on 30 June 2009.

Michael Paul Vaughan was born in Eccles, Greater Manchester the younger son of Graham and Dee Vaughan, and a great-great-nephew of the early 20th century Lancashire and England cricketers Ernest and Johnny Tyldesley.

The family moved to Sheffield, when he was nine.

His father, an engineer, had captained the Worsley third XI, and Vaughan says "My first memory of cricket is when I was 10 years old, hitting balls on the boundary while my dad was playing for Worsley in the Manchester Association League."

However, it was his brother David (currently working as an estate agent), older by two years, who got him into the game.

He attended Silverdale School, and was enthusiastic about football, later reflecting, "I'd have probably preferred to be a footballer if I could have been good enough. But my knees would never have lasted."

Despite his many commitments, he has been a regular supporter of Sheffield Wednesday F.C.

As a youngster he played alongside future England international footballer and Manchester United captain Gary Neville, himself a talented youth cricketer, during the Bunbury Cricket Festival.

Vaughan started playing cricket for the school side and it was here he first caught the eye of Doug Padgett, the Yorkshire coach.

He also started playing club cricket for Sheffield Collegiate Cricket Club at Abbeydale Park in Sheffield.

In 2012, Vaughan carried the Olympic Torch through Hillingdon for the London Olympic Games on 24 July.

Vaughan stated he would be voting Conservative in 2015 and expressed dissatisfaction about the way in which the Labour Party acted after the 2017 general election.

Vaughan, then living in Derbyshire, turned up as a child to watch Yorkshire playing at Sheffield.

During the tea break, he was playing on the outfield with his friends when (then) Yorkshire head coach Doug Padgett spotted him, and approached him about joining the county.

However, Vaughan was born in Eccles, Greater Manchester, and at the time Yorkshire had a strict policy of only picking players who were born in Yorkshire.

Years later, when the rule was removed, Doug Padgett re-investigated the young player, and offered him a place at the Yorkshire academy.