Simon Hughes (cricketer)

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Simon Peter Hughes (born 20 December 1959) is an English cricketer and journalist. He is the son of the actor, Peter Hughes, and the brother of the historian Bettany Hughes.

He was born at Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, and educated at Latymer Upper School (where he was a contemporary of Hugh Grant). He was an oustanding fast medium bowler of away swing and captained the school XI successfully. He went on to study geography at Durham ,and played for the university. He joined Middlesex CCC in 1980 and played for them for 12 seasons, culminating in his benefit season of 1991. He subsequently spent two seasons (1992-1993) playing for Durham CCC. Hughes also played for Northern Transvaal in South Africa during the winter of 1982-83.

Since retiring from cricket, he has worked as a journalist for "The Independent" and "The Daily Telegraph", and for the BBC. He has written several books, including the autobiographical A Lot of Hard Yakka (for which he won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 1997), Yakking Around the World (which deal with his experiences as a county cricketer during and between cricket seasons), Jargonbusting (a guide to cricket terminology) and Morning Everyone: An Ashes Odyssey.

He is perhaps best known for his work as "The Analyst" on Channel 4's cricket coverage (from 1999 to 2005), where he spent matches in a VT trailer, watching replays and drawing viewers' attention to particular details. He has since teamed up with Geoffrey Boycott and Mark Nicholas (with whom he worked on Channel 4) to provide his analysis on England home games from 2006-2010 for Five (TV) cricket highlights programme.