Player Profile(#30)...Ryan Sidebottom(England)

Ryan Jay Sidebottom (born 15 January 1978 in Huddersfield) is an English cricketer who plays international cricket for England and domestic cricket for Nottinghamshire. He is a primarily a left-arm fast-medium bowler. Sidebottom played his first Test match in 2001 against Pakistan, but failed to take a wicket and was dropped for six years. In 2007 he was brought back into the side following an injury to Matthew Hoggard and took four wickets in his first innings. Since then he has become a prolific bowler for England. He took the 37th Test cricket hat-trick in his 11th match for England against New Zealand, becoming the 11th English player to do so, on 8 March 2008, and on 23 March he took his third five-wicket haul in the same series, breaking the previous record for an Englishman in New Zealand. His father, Arnie Sidebottom, was also a cricketer, and played one Test match for England in 1985 against Australia.

Sidebottom made his debut for his native Yorkshire in 1997. The winner of the NBC Denis Compton Award two years running, (in 1999 and 2000), he finished as the leading domestic English-bowler at the end of 2000, conceding only 12.5 runs for each of his 24 wickets, and capping this with a nomination for Cricketer of the Year by the Cricket Writers' Club. Injury problems took away much of his 2000 season, but, during the winter, Sidebottom toured the West Indies with England A, taking 16 wickets at a bowling average of 16.81. He made his international debut the following summer against Pakistan in place of Matthew Hoggard. He played in two ODIs in October 2001 against Zimbabwe.

Sidebottom left Yorkshire to join Nottinghamshire at the end of the 2003 season, having taken 163 wickets for Yorkshire at an average of 25.12. At Nottinghamshire, he took 50 wickets in both the 2005 and 2006 seasons, helping them to the County Championship title in 2005; he had also won the title with Yorkshire in 2001.

He sports a flamboyant hairstyle which has led to the dressing room nickname of "Sexual Chocolate". Sidebottom's long hair indirectly led to a second nickname, "Stringfellow", after a hapless Henry Blofeld repeatedly confused him with long-haired nightclub impresario Peter Stringfellow during the first Test match against New Zealand in 2008.