Michael Vaughan
Michael Paul Vaughan is an English cricket commentator and former cricketer who played all forms of the game. 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. 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.
Vaughan captained England in 51 Tests, winning 26 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. However, a recurring knee injury, his decision to move down the batting order to accommodate other opening batsmen 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. Vaughan announced his retirement from first-class cricket on 30 June 2009.
Early life
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, 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.
Personal life
Vaughan married Nichola Shannon on 27 September 2003. The couple have three children.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. In 2012, Vaughan carried the Olympic Torch through Hillingdon for the London Olympic Games on 24 July.
Vaughan is a second cousin of the actress Catherine Tyldesley, known for her role as Eva Price in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street.
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.
In December 2025, Vaughan was in a restaurant near Bondi Beach in Sydney during the 2025 Bondi Beach shooting and sheltered inside with his family.
County career
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 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.
International career
1993–2003
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.
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. In the fifth and final Test at Sydney, Vaughan scored a match-winning 183 before being given out lbw to Andy Bichel, as replays showed that not only was the ball missing leg stump but it was going over the stumps by a fair margin.
He became the first visiting batsman for 32 years to score over 600 runs in a Test match series in Australia and the first Englishman to make 3 Test hundreds in a series against Australia since Chris Broad. In total, he scored 1,481 Test runs in 2002, at the time the second highest for a calendar year in Test history after Viv Richards's 1,710 in 1976, although as of 2010 Vaughan's total has been exceeded another five times. This run of form made Vaughan the number one batsman in the world according to the ICC rankings, the first Englishman to achieve this since Graham Gooch.
Vaughan followed with a 156 against South Africa at Edgbaston in 2003. He was appointed Test captain in the next match, after Nasser Hussain stepped down. At the point at which he took over the England captaincy, Vaughan had a Test batting average of 50.98.
England captaincy
Vaughan's limited-overs batting rarely lived up to his success in Tests: indeed, despite a total of 86 matches played, he never made a One Day International century. His highest ODI score is 90 not out, which he made off 99 balls against Zimbabwe.Despite this, on 6 May 2003, Vaughan was appointed captain of the England One Day International team, Nasser Hussain choosing to step down after the 2003 World Cup.
In July, he also took over from Hussain the captaincy of the Test side. He suddenly became captain of the England Test team on 28 July 2003, after scoring 156 in the first Test against South Africa, when Nasser Hussain resigned after England had drawn the game. The England team lost his first Test in charge by an innings and 92 runs, but went on to level the series in the next game. The series ended in a 2–2 draw.
Vaughan's batting initially suffered under the increased pressures of captaincy; in his first twelve matches as captain, his batting average was only 30.31. However, under Vaughan's captaincy, the England side became one of the most successful sides in world cricket. He benefited from the revolution begun by coach Duncan Fletcher and former captain Nasser Hussain, such as the awarding of central contracts to the core England players, and continued to forge a winning team.
In 2003, after the drawn series against South Africa, England toured the Indian subcontinent, beating Bangladesh but losing to Sri Lanka. In 2004, England were unbeaten, winning eleven matches and drawing two, including an England record of eight consecutive victories. They beat the West Indies away for the first time since 1968. They then won all seven home Tests against New Zealand and the West Indies, before beating South Africa away for the first time since 1965. In the 2005 home season, England easily beat Bangladesh in a two-Test series, before facing Australia for the Ashes.
Following a series defeat to South Africa, Vaughan stepped down as England captain on 3 August 2008 before the final Test at the Oval. In a highly emotional speech, Vaughan thanked those closest to him for their support and, amidst a flood of tears, asked if anyone present had a tissue.
Ashes 2005
Hopes were high for the Ashes after the success of the previous eighteen months, but expectations were moderated by the knowledge that Australia had been the best team in the world for many years. Australian captain Ricky Ponting called for a catching pact, where batsmen would accept the word of fielders as to whether they were caught, but this was rejected by Vaughan who preferred to leave it to the umpires.The build-up was long and intense, with press speculation over the ability of many players, leading Vaughan to say: "Both sets of players are sick and tired of talking about the Ashes. We've got a young group of players who are excited by the challenge, and it's a challenge we are all looking forward to."
In the first Test, at Lord's, England were easily beaten; Vaughan performed very poorly scoring only 3 and 4. Analysis of Vaughan's batting showed that over the last 30 months he had averaged only 37.77, and lacked consistency with a poor defensive technique. Despite his lack of form, he turned down the opportunity of playing county cricket for Yorkshire against Derbyshire, preferring to work in the nets with Duncan Fletcher. He returned, however, for their match against Kent, making 116 not out, and taking 2/42. He captained England to a narrow two-run victory in the second Test to level the series, but again scored poorly with only 24 and 1.
By the third Test, Vaughan's poor run of form was attracting increasing criticism. But during the third Test at Old Trafford he answered the critics, albeit with a bit of luck during a Glenn McGrath over. In the second ball of the over, when Vaughan was on 41, he cut hard at a wide delivery from McGrath and Gilchrist allowed it to slip through his gloves and run away for four runs. The very next ball McGrath clean bowled Vaughan with a superb off cutter, but this was in vain as the umpire called a no-ball for overstepping the line. Vaughan went on to strike 166, punishing in particular the lacklustre bowling of Jason Gillespie. Vaughan was eventually caught by Glenn McGrath off a full-toss delivery from occasional slow left-armer Simon Katich.
However, his opposing captain, Ponting, was equal to the task and made 156 as Australia clung on for the draw. Vaughan made 58 in the first innings of the fourth Test, but was out for a duck in the second, as England struggled in reaching their target of 129, eventually reaching it with three wickets to spare.
In the fifth Test, he scored 11 and 45, as it ended in a draw, allowing England to claim the Ashes for the first time since Mike Gatting's side in the 1986–87 series in Australia.
The England team were widely lauded after winning the Ashes. Tens of thousands of people lined the route of their open-top bus parade through London, with around 25,000 gathering in Trafalgar Square, their final destination.
Vaughan was given the freedom of his home city of Sheffield in honour of his achievements. In the New Year Honours, Vaughan became an OBE for his successful captaincy; the rest of the side were appointed MBEs.