HE'S gone down in the cricket history books as one of the best fast bowlers England has ever produced, but thanks to reality TV Darren Gough is now more famous for dazzling on the dancefloor.
Last year the former Yorkshire star's talented tootsies danced him to victory in series three of BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing with Lilia Kopylova.
The pair fought off tough competition in the final from favourites Colin Jackson and Zoe Ball.
"I was more nervous dancing than I've ever been playing cricket," 36-year-old Darren confesses.
"With cricket you know you're a decent player but with dancing it's a different league." Dance schools across the country have reported a surge in men slipping on their dancing shoes since the man known as Dazzler became the show's first male winner.
The cricketer's manly frame and clumsy start to the competition convinced British men that they too can Cha Cha Cha like the best of them.
"I've had so many letters from dance teachers, especially about the number of men that have started dancing. For men, it's a macho thing that stops them dancing," he says.
"They sit at the bar, watching the women dance and say 'I'm not dancing'. It's getting over the embarrassment factor but once you get over it, you'll love it. All men wish they could dance, I know they do.
"Dancing also gives you confidence and the opportunity to socialise with other people and meet new friends."
With two dance trophies (he also won the Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special) in the display cabinet, Darren is the perfect person to offer advice to a couple of this year's male contestants.
His good friend Matt Dawson and former England teammate Mark Ramprakash are both vying for the crown of ballroom king.
"It's a difficult choice picking a winner. I'd like Lilia and Matt to do well but I'll have to back Ramps," he says.
"I've told them, listen to whatever your partner says and just do it. You sometimes see these celebrities arguing with their partners and it's stupid because they're the professionals. They're only trying to stop you embarrassing yourself in front of 10 million people!"
While Mark has got off to a flying start on the dancefloor, Darren says the audience love an underdog.
"Matt's doing it the right way, improving each week. Lilia's quite a clever girl so maybe she's working it that way!
"It's amazing each week somebody different comes from behind and ends up being the best – but that's what's good about Strictly. I went from nowhere to winning the show. If you come from the bottom and work your way up the public actually prefer that."
Darren never expected to win Strictly Come Dancing but in the final, his competitive streak finally shone through.
"I never wanted to win; I always said I wanted Zoe Ball to win. Once she went out and there was just me and Colin, I thought 'right, I'm going to win this now' and put in my best performance on the A Night To Remember dance," he grins.
"Colin and Erin danced with the puppets and luckily for me it didn't go down very well!" Though Darren hasn't stored away his glitzy dance costumes just yet – there's talk of him opening his own dance school – the Yorkshireman has returned to his cricketing roots.
He was included in the England side this year and continued to play for his new county Essex, who he joined after leaving Headingley in 2004 to be closer to his children, but was recently stumped by a stress fracture in his leg.
"Cricket definitely helped with the dancing," he says. "There's the fitness element but I also got strong feet through the sport, which helped me with certain moves in dances like the foxtrot and quickstep.
"But performing in front of the crowd was the biggest help to me. I've played in front of 10,000 with cricket - that's nothing like 10 million viewers - but I was able to block out the crowds when I was nervous.
"Lilia used to say I'd put my best performance in on the Saturday night. All week I was rubbish but managed to pull it out the bag on the night! That's why winning Strictly was so good, because it surprised me and everybody else."
Each week on Strictly Come Dancing Darren mastered different routines for dances like the paso doble, waltz and rhumba.
Even though he was used to training hard for cricket, rehearsing all day with dance partner Lilia was tough.
"I lost over a stone during the show. It's hard work dancing five or six hours a day." Darren's sons, aged 11 and eight, were red-faced when their sporty dad first took to the dancefloor last year.
But following in their father's famous footsteps they've also caught the dancing bug.
"Of course they were embarrassed," says Darren. "On the first show they were just laughing at me and said I was 'rubbish' but by the end they were voting for me.
"They got into dancing last year and got their own dance shoes. Len Goodman, one of the judges, came along to their school and taught them to do the quickstep, which they loved."
Now Darren is encouraging more children to get on the dancefloor and reap the rewards.
He's currently fronting Persil Non-Bio's Little Penguins campaign to get pre-school kids stepping to the beat.
"Dancing gets them exercising from a young age," he says, "and it helps if parents encourage their kids to dance, especially the boys, so that when they get older they don't think dancing is just a girly thing!"
l Dazzler On The Dancefloor, by Darren Gough, is published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £16.99.
grant.woodward@ypn.co.uk

The Bloke

THIS week the Bloke learned that the secret to a successful relationship is separate beds.
Hers is in Leeds, mine's in Liverpool.
Of course I'm joking. No one in their right mind would want to live in Liverpool.
But let's face it, few men could deny there are times when you wouldn't mind stretching out in the king size on your own.
You see, women are fundamentally very different when it comes to going to bed. Especially when it gets to the sleeping part.
Now your bloke sees a bed, like most things, as a tool that's there to serve a purpose.
In the case of a bed that purpose is to ensure he is fully recharged to face the challenge of another day and its many trials and tribulations.
Especially if he's planning to watch England play Australia at cricket.
Women, however, don't necessarily see it like that.
For many of them the bed is a place for the chunks of reflection and conversation they didn't get round to earlier in the evening because they were too busy watching Holby City.
The Missus herself fits squarely into this category and will merrily start all manner of banter at the time when I'm trying to clear my mind in readiness for a good night's kip.
To combat this I took a leaf out of pop mogul Simon Cowell's book, having heard that he'd taken the step of banning his girlfriend from asking him any questions after ten o'clock at night.
"Why does he do that?" asked the Missus, just before lights out, and we were back to square one.
But if it was just the barrage of questions I could probably cope. It's the word association games I have a problem with.
Her favourite is the name game, which involves having to think of someone famous whose first name begins with the first letter of the surname of the person before.
So if I say Thomas Jefferson, third US president and author of the Declaration of Independence, she'll reply with Jade Goody, hapless contestant in Big Brother 3.
When the game's finished the Missus will happily drift off to sleep.
Yours truly, on the other hand, will lie awake for hours thinking of a response to Moon Unit Zappa, followed by strange dreams about South African long distance runner Zola Budd.
Then there are the hazards of the middle-of-the-night trip to the toilet.
You see, if roused from her slumber the Missus will strike up a conversation, no matter what time it is.
This means climbing back into bed after a visit to the loo is like that bit in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indiana Jones tries to avoid the booby traps by swapping a golden idol for a bag of sand the same weight.
Everything has to be done in stages if another sleepless night is to be averted.
I won't even go into the age old problem of duvet-hogging, which incidentally my mate Pete once tried to overcome by wriggling into a sleeping bag each time he bedded down with his girlfriend.
Then again, she was French.