Sports legend Matthew Hoggard opened up on GB News about his journey since putting down the cricket bat back in 2013.
Chatting with presenter Lee Anderson about how he turned his love for the cricket pitch into his love for the kitchen, Mr Hoggard retold the story of how he came to be in charge of a barbecue school.
Sitting down with Lee, the Ashes winner explained why he moved from playing cricket to setting up a BBQ school, called “Hoggy’s Grill”.
“I finished cricket in 2013. I didn’t know what to do, so I went into insurance. I went into foreign currency and didn’t like any of it,” he admitted.
“And my missus said, you need to find something that you’re passionate about.”
As a result, he turned to food, adding: “And what better way to cook food than on fire?”
Visibly impressed, Lee asked: “Did you start from scratch? Like, learn yourself?”
Enthusiastically, the Yorkshireman nodded, adding: “You go on lots of different courses. You go around different manufacturers of barbecues and you trial and error. You learn from other people, you do everything.”
Mr Hoggard sat down with GB News star Lee Anderson for a candid interview
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GB NEWS
Lee pressed: “When you were a cricketer, you’d have been a lot slimmer eating different food, probably a different regime. Tell us about that.”
In response, Mr Hoggard gave Lee further insight into his lifestyle.
He said: “To be fair, I wasn’t eating a lot of different food, but I was active.
“I went into the gym, I was on a cricket pitch for five days, and you burned the food off, so you didn’t have to really watch what you ate.
“And for the last 12 years, I’ve been putting things in and not burning them off. So that’s why I’m now maybe four stone overweight or more, and it’s time to take it off.”
“I was born back in Yorkshire. My mum and dad were in Pelsall, we moved back into Yorkshire, so I was born in the county, so I was allowed to play for it.
But, he admitted to being a “late bloomer”, explaining that he acquired his Yorkshire contract later on in life.
Diving into a bit more of his history, he told Lee how he attended a comprehensive school, giving him the limited choice to only play football.
“It wasn’t my favourite sport, but I wanted to play sports.
“So I played football for school and in the winter I played rugby for my local rugby club, and then cricket for my local cricket club in the summer,” he explained.
Lee asked Mr Hoggard about how he fell in love with cricket
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GB NEWS
The sportsman went on to admit that his start in cricket was all down to a “big piece of luck” when ex-Yorkshire captain Phil Carrick came to Pudsey.
“He saw me playing third team and put me in the first team, and so I was 17 in the team. He saw something in me, I don’t know, because everybody else had overlooked me.
“I think it was because I swung the ball away.
“He liked that, and he took me under his wing and put me in the first team and then sent me off to see Richard Lumb, who was in South Africa.”
As well as running Hoggy’s Grill, Matthew Hoggard is now a UK-leading motivational speaker with the Champions Speakers Agency. For more information visit www.champions-speakers.co.uk
