Stand and deliver

Last year, one English cricketer kept his wicket while all those around him were losing theirs. Michael Vaughan now has two extra pressures - being the world's No 1 batsman and England's latest one-day captain. How will he cope?

It is spitting with rain as the fans trickle into Headingley. Dark clouds scud briskly across patches of bright blue sky on a blustery, changeable Bank Holiday Monday. The young come armed with optimistic coolers, the more mature with flasks of hot drink, stoicism and extra padding.

Inside, Yorkshire Phoenix are limbering up for their National League first division match against Essex Eagles. The PA blares news of the faster-paced Twenty20 game promising 'twice the action in half the time!'. Even the announcer sounds unsure. 'It's cricket like you've never seen it before! Big-hitting entertainment! Fancy dress!'

A weary titter ripples through the stands. That's not to say today's decent, one-third capacity crowd would mind some big-hitting entertainment. Far from it. Juicy scores off the bat remain the point and one man on the field is poised to deliver: Michael Vaughan, tall and lanky, a woolly hat covering his cropped hair, now dashing between coloured markers as part of a fielding drill; shortly afterwards, getting his eye in at the nets.

As the players make their way to the dressing room, Vaughan is politely besieged by supporters proffering miniature bats (mostly boys) or wanting their pictures taken with him (mostly girls). A bead of sweat meanders down his temple as he poses and signs, poses and signs.

Yorkshire and England opener Michael Vaughan is not only the best batsman in the world, but an actual hero: a man beaten on paper, but utterly unbowed by the fast-bowling might of Australia in the winter, a habitual centurion in 2002, and new captain of England's one-day team.

The English Cricket Board deputy chairman, Mike Soper, said last month that Phil Tufnell on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here has done more for cricket in recent times than anyone he can think of - he clearly wasn't thinking very hard.

Vaughan's statistics only begin to tell his history. He scored 1,481 Test runs in 2002, six centuries among them, including two colossal near-doubles, 197 at Trent Bridge and 195 at the Oval, respectively.

Then there was the winter's Ashes series against the best team in the world. Australia won 4-1. But Vaughan walloped 177 on the first day at Adelaide, and although a stylish 145 in the second innings at Melbourne couldn't save his team, his 183 in the second Sydney innings enabled England to win that crucial face-saver. Identified at the start of hostilities by Glenn McGrath as the spirit to crush, Vaughan's batting was never dismantled by the Australian attack, unlike fellow opener Marcus Trescothick's. Since then, he has overtaken Australia's Matthew Hayden to top the international batting rankings.

Vaughan's appearance in today's low-key, little-England environs neatly encapsulates one of cricket's more endearing absurdities. He is now a superstar interloper in this world where people clutch teapot-shaped signs bearing the numbers four and six and where dogs are allowed into matches (today's count: one Yorkshire terrier, one Alsatian, one setter and a Heinz). It's as though David Beckham has come for a kickabout at Leyton Orient.

As it turns out, Yorkshire Tea's teapot placards don't get much use this afternoon. An under-strength Essex post a modest 211 for six, and promptly annihilate the home team. Yorkshire finish 54 all out, and the mighty Vaughan is out for a less-than-mighty five.

'World number one, where are you?' comes the heckle, as a stony-faced Vaughan stalks back to a quiet pavilion.

We meet in his hometown of Sheffield, the day after Vaughan's beloved Sheffield Wednesday are relegated. When OSM arrives, there's only Ronnie O'Sullivan visible, striding through the hotel lobby (in town for the World Snooker Championships). Behind a pillar, however, a man in fashionably cut jeans, leather moccasins and a hip yellow sweatshirt talks frustratedly into a mobile phone.

He's been in training for about a week. 'It's quite funny,' Vaughan says, poured awkwardly into a snug hotel bar chair, his long bones creating sharp angles. 'You've got all the young Yorkshire lads looking at you, the best batsman in the world, and then your off stump's been flown out of the ground, you're chipping them in the air - they must think, "It must be easy, international cricket."'He smiles ruefully. 'I can honestly say I've been miles from the world's number one bat. I've felt like the world's thousandth.'

Vaughan was in Monaco when he found out he was top of the world rankings. 'I thought, "Jesus, I've done nothing for four and a half weeks, I'm on a beach, and I'm number one, how the hell's that gone?" And then I realised Hayden had failed to score and I'd sneaked up. It's nice. But it doesn't mean a great deal.'

Vaughan, it becomes quickly apparent, is rather good at self-deprecation.

But it would be a mistake to confuse this dry modesty with any lack of self-belief. Every quote Vaughan has given since his name was mentioned in conjunction with the captaincy has read very diplomatically, but fairly yelled 'give it to me!' between the lines. It's this level head and analytical mindset, coupled with a near-Zen-like calm, that most observers have cited in his favour with regard to the captaincy, and have located as the bedrock beneath his progress with the bat.

Since his return from the beach, Vaughan has been in demand for photo shoots for FHM and GQ, and he's being interviewed by people who aren't cricket correspondents, some of them female. 'Makes a nice change,' he says, unladdish. It's all part of a process to transform Vaughan from unusually talented cricketer to cultural icon.

He was playing golf against Tiger Woods on the computer when David Graveney, chairman of the England selectors, called to offer the one-day captaincy. This responsibility has not exactly come out of the blue. No one stencilled 'FEC' (Future England Captain) on a young Vaughan's bag as famously happened with Michael Atherton, but Vaughan's ascent looks now to have some of the steady determination of his recent form.

Vaughan was born in Salford, Manchester. His dad, an engineer, came over the Pennines to Sheffield with his job when Vaughan was nine. Vaughan Sr played cricket - he captained the Worsley third XI - but it was Vaughan's brother, older by two years ('He's an estate agent. More sensible than I am'), who lured the young Michael into the nets. Vaughan was passionate about football, but cricket won out when he was sent for a trial at Yorkshire under-11s, and got in.

'I love football,' sighs Vaughan. 'I'd have probably preferred to be a footballer if I could have been good enough. But my knees would never have lasted.'

He remains a fan of pretty much anything that involves a ball or competitive element. 'It drives my girlfriend Nicola [whom he's marrying in September] mad. It used to drive my mother mad too.'

Since the World Cup ended, he's worked on his golf, watched football, been to the Grand National ('fantastic'), seen live rugby, and the tennis in France. He wishes he could ski, but a vulnerable knee (he has had two operations on his cartilage) means he can't risk it. When there's a kickabout, he plays it safe in goal. Any day off on tour, he plays golf.

Then there's his PlayStation. 'We're all competitive,' he says, of his England counterparts. 'I don't care what anyone says, any professional sportsman is competitive, whether he's playing snooker, golf, PlayStation, you want to win. I guess it's quite good for your mental strength. A lot of banter, a lot of piss-taking goes on. If you can put up with a little putt on the 18th to win some money against Nasser Hussain, with him jabbering in your ear, you can cope with facing the odd ball from Brett Lee.' He chuckles.

He was 'not bad' at school, where he was tutored at home by the teacher who also happened to be his cricket master. 'He used to come round and do half an hour's teaching, then say, "come on, let's go off". He could see my mind wasn't on it.' The call came from Yorkshire's first team, and Vaughan never went back to the classroom. He made his first-class debut at the age of 18, scoring 64 against Lancashire at Old Trafford. His friends, meanwhile, went on to university and working life. Vaughan remains close to them and credits them with keeping him down-to-earth. 'One's a pharmacist, one sells carpets, one sells chemicals, one's in the Army - he's in Baghdad. One owns a gym.'

Nevertheless, the life of a budding professional cricketer wasn't unbearably regimented. 'Cricket's not like football, where they dictate everything you do from the age of 15. From an early age you're taught to be disciplined. To act like a man, too.' And a man does drink. 'Along the way in the county circuit, you do have that fun. And early on you probably do have too much fun, and forget that you're actually there to play cricket,' he says, half to himself. But Vaughan won't be drawn on his youthful excesses. 'You soon mature and get out of that,' is how he leaves it.

After captaining England A, he made his Test debut in 1999 - relatively late - in nerve-racking circumstances. England were a dire 2 for 4 against South Africa in Johannesburg when he nudged 33 runs. For the rookie to have held his ground in such a pressure cooker, when the more experienced batsmen had failed, showed enormous presence of mind. Since then, his rise has been interrupted by time out for injuries - his knee, mostly. As part of his training, Vaughan goes to spinning classes to strengthen the muscles around his knee. The mind fairly boggles at this vision of him cycling away in a roomful of Lycra-clad Sheffield hardbodies, while pumping Euro-dance urges them on.

Any discussion of Vaughan invariably mentions temperament. His is held to be excellent, as a trainer might say of a racehorse. What does it mean?

'It's a funny word,' he smiles. 'I don't know if it's being sensible. You have to have a belief in your ability. I think if you don't have the belief, you're not going to have the temperament to cope. You should firmly believe that what you are doing is correct, whatever situation the game's in.'

The key to Vaughan's good temperament, certainly of late, is a positive mental state. It's an overused phrase but it's quite a deep business, when you consider Buddhists spend years meditating to attain this level of involved detachment.

'People say when you get to 100, it's a great feeling, and it is,' Vaughan explains, 'But Darren Lehmann [the Australian former captain at Yorkshire] always said, "why can't you have that feeling when you're on nought?" It's only a confidence factor.'

An empty mind, too, comes into it. 'When you're in form, you just score, you don't really think,' Vaughan says. 'I suppose when you don't score, you think too much about little things. You've just got to go out and play, and try and keep your head free of silly thoughts. It's like my golf at the minute - my head's full of crap. It's exactly the same batting, thinking about too many things rather than thinking about the ball.'

Hand-in-hand with Vaughan's unflappability and focused mind has come a change in stance, physical and mental. 'Probably around India, New Zealand time last year, my confidence grew, my feet started to move better,' he expands. 'I was getting into better positions before the ball was released. And my philosophy on batting changed. I go out to score runs now, not to defend my wicket. It's a different mentality. And I know, or I think I know, an approach to play against Australia, and that has to be the aggressive approach.'

This new-found aggression contrasts markedly with his past caution, one that's which often found him described in the mould of Atherton. It's as though Vaughan had spent years perfecting a textbook stance, and has, if not quite thrown away the rulebook, now put it on a high shelf.

There's one more thing that might have a role in Vaughan's tipping over from good to great. 'Nicola is Irish, and her granny gave me a shillelagh, about a year and a half ago. She thought I was getting injured too much. And I started scoring a load of runs. So she sent me another! She sends one every six months. She thinks it brings me luck. She can keep sending them.'

Vaughan is late for his spinning class. His unimpeachable manners mean that, although his knees bounce up and down, he will graciously consider luck - and then the idea of failure - before dashing off to ensure his prospects of fitness. He flies down the stairs, and you catch yourself thinking "Oh God, the knee".

Although his clothes are up to the minute, there's something wonderfully old-fashioned about Vaughan. He has the air of a man you'd trust in a crisis. He would look good in uniform. People like Vaughan become pilots: straight-ahead men, with uncluttered minds. The Yorkshire and England dressing rooms may hold secrets of Vaughan's baggage, but temperament has clearly won out over 'character', that sportsman's affliction that makes some don fake plastic breasts.

Does he ever worry? Especially since he is now being relied upon not only to keep up his form, but improve on it and lead England's one-day side from darkness into light?

'Everyone'll be watching me now,' he nods. 'Everyone expects you to score 100, 100, 100. It won't happen, it's just impossible,' he shakes his head, smiling.

'I'm doing something right,' he continues. 'But I've only had one good year. It was a fantastic year, a great year. I've got to try and continue to do exactly the same again. But it'll be hard to do exactly the same again, I'm not kidding myself. If I score 700 in the next 12 Tests, well... it'll be a good bet. You've got to be realistic. There will be times when the runs don't flow as freely. I'll keep my feet firmly on the ground.

'I do worry,' he says. 'You have to stay calm and look calm, but underneath it all, there's stages where you have a bit of a panic. I get really nervous the day before a match, and the morning of a match.'

And then?

'Once I get on the pitch and I've taken my stance, the nerves disappear.'

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