CHARLES HUTCHINSON reckons Darren Gough could have gone the way of Gazza, but instead he shone.

NUMBER one in the nation's cricket affections, Darren Gough is now number one in the best sellers' list at the Sportspages bookstore in the week of release of Dazzler.

Sporting autobiographies, like policemen, grow ever younger but the England and Yorkshire pace bowler's book is well timed. Gough has turned 30; he is at the peak of his wicket-taking powers, gaining more than anyone from England's policy of central contracts; 2001 is his benefit year at Yorkshire County Cricket Club, and he has newly moved south to Buckingham to be nearer his wife's family and more conveniently placed for the demands that go with his England contract.

That move south and his restricted appearances in his county colours have led to the Barnsley bomber receiving hate mail from embittered and blinkered Yorkshire members, who sense a wilting of the White Rose spirit in the county's best bowler since FS Trueman in his fiery pomp.

Those sceptics would be advised to pick up a copy of Dazzler: as Gough explains, just as in 1993 when Northamptonshire came calling with his career stymied, and in 1999 when the Yorkshire committee handled his contract renewal with a lack of forethought, his love of his county prevails. Significantly, he is pictured in his Yorkshire rather than England shirt on the book cover.

As he has matured from Guzzler to Dazzler, cutting down on the beer and fast food and responding to the England fitness regime under the quietly authoritative Zimbabwean coach Duncan Fletcher and the firebrand captaincy of Nasser Hussain, Gough has become a more studious cricketer.

He is still the showman who first wanted to be a footballer in the style of his hero Glenn Hoddle and has a fixation with his bowling mph on the Speedster, but he knows that graft must accompany the craft.

You sense he could have become a Gazza figure, with fluctuating weight, discipline and injury problems. Yet his graph his gone the opposite way to that of the mercurial midfielder and indeed that of Paul Jarvis, his predecessor as Yorkshire's great bowling hope, who set himself the challenge of drinking 1,000 pints of beer one summer season and exceeded it by 500.

Any battles now are with opponents, in particular arrogant South Africans and unsporting Sri Lankans; old-school conservative authorities slow to change English cricket, and his sternest critic, Freddie Trueman, the grumbling Yorkshireman who once questioned the legitimacy of Gough's bowling action.

There appears to be little love for his county captain David Byas, or Byas as he calls him whereas so many other players are given their nicknames, but he says a mutual respect bonds the star turn and the "above-average county cricketer who can't understand why he hasn't represented England".

Gough's style of writing, with the ghostly assistance of News Of The World cricket correspondent David Norrie, is as forthright, perky and sparky as the man himself, mixing the language of the tabloid and the sledger with occasional unexpected flurries of atmospheric description. The voice is that of a northern working-class hero, but ebullient rather than belligerent. He is not averse to blowing his own (brass-band) trumpet but he can take a joke against himself too, especially over his preciousness about his hair and his teenage tastes in Eighties fashion.

Gough is not afraid to expose the failings of others, not least Martin McCague, the Aussie-raised Kent fast bowler whose inglorious England career should have been even shorter, according to the no-nonsense Yorkshireman.

He is, however, generous in his praise of the likes of his friend Shane Warne, the Aussie spin sorcerer, Courtney Walsh, the leonine West Indies bowler, and former Windies skipper Richie Richardson, whose brief Yorkshire career was blighted by exhaustion but still inspired a new professionalism in Gough.

One final factor makes this summer the perfect time for a book of Darren's deeds, diary memoirs and diatribes: the England team is resurgent with the Dazzler as its talisman and the Aussies in his sights. What joy it is to re-live the triumphs over South Africa, the West Indies, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the company of Gough the Lionheart.

Darren Gough, Dazzler, The Autobiography, is published by Michael Joseph at £16.99, hardback.