Michael Vaughan

Michael Vaughan will forever be known in English sporting history as the first captain to win an Ashes series in a generation, his calm, obdurate and ruthlessly effective leadership overshadowing his not inconsiderable contributions as a batter armed with a classy, composed technique that placed him briefly at the top of the world rankings.

Vaughan faced up to his first ball in Test cricket with England four wickets down for two runs on a damp flyer in Johannesburg in November 1999 and drew immediate comparisons with Michael Atherton for his inhumanly calm aura at the crease. Unlike Atherton, Vaughan blossomed magnificently, playing with a freedom of expression that Atherton had never approached.

He sparkled his way to 900 runs in seven Tests against Sri Lanka and India in 2002, the prelude to a formidable series in Australia in which he became the first visiting batter in over three decades to top 600 runs. Vaughan was appointed captain of England's one-day side in time for the 2003 home season, and inherited the Test captaincy two weeks later when Nasser Hussain abdicated out of the blue. Despite a torrid baptism against South Africa, including a massive defeat at Lord's, Vaughan guided his team to a 2-2 draw. After a stutter in Sri Lanka, he confirmed the arrival of a new era by leading England to a rout of West Indies on their home soil, the first time in over 35 years an England team had achieved such a feat.

He missed the opening Test of the summer that year but returned to guide England to a clean sweep with victories over New Zealand (3-0) and West Indies (4-0), went on to record a memorable 2-1 series win in South Africa, and then achieved nirvana with the same scoreline in arguably the greatest series of all time.

That was Vaughan's pinnacle. It was followed by time out of cricket with a knee injury that also kept him out of England's infamous 2006-07 series in Australia, where they were pummelled 5-0 under Andrew Flintoff. Vaughan was recalled, as one-day captain, for the CB Series, which England won, though he himself only played three of ten games. Two months after the 2007 ODI World Cup, which he limped through in more ways than one, he quit the white-ball captaincy, having had by then re-established himself at the helm of the Test side.

He scored a memorable century on home turf at Headingley in his comeback game, but though there were hundreds against India at Trent Bridge later that year, and New Zealand at Lord's in 2008, he was never quite the same. After a loss to South Africa at Edgbaston that year, he resigned. Though he vowed to play on, as the 2009 Ashes drew closer it became apparent that he was out of contention and he called it quits in June 2009.

After retirement, he took to life as a commentator (on social media as much as on television) with gusto, often ruffling feathers with his views. In 2021, Vaughan was named in the report that followed Azeem Rafiq's allegations of systemic racism in the Yorkshire cricket set-up, in regard to alleged use of racist language ahead of a county game in 2009, but he was cleared after a hearing by the ECB.