Darren Gough walks into a quiet room at the home of Yorkshire cricket at Headingley. His face is younger than his 37 years, his eyes still burn with the fire that has distinguished an outstanding cricketing career. At the end of this season, Gough will give up the Yorkshire captaincy and move on to the next chapter in his life. He will continue to play the game at some level, but his time in the front line is coming to an end.

He sits at a table, stretches his right leg in a straight, diagonal line to the floor as his left reaches the ground in the more natural L-shape. The right knee pains him first thing every morning, or whenever he has to sit on an aeroplane or drive his car for more than 10 minutes, and it is the damned knee that has whispered uncomfortable truths into his head: “Time to call it a day.”

He leaves also because he wants to spend more time watching his two boys, 13-year-old Liam and 10-year-old Brennan, play the game. They both play for their counties and Dad thinks they will be good. “I have loved playing cricket and I loved trying to entertain people, but that was my professional life. My private life is a different me and it’s time for that person now. Besides, I enjoy watching the boys.”

He will give up the Yorkshire captaincy, he won’t play any four-day matches but he can’t leave the game. Whether it’s for a pub team near where he lives in Buckinghamshire, or some charity team, or eventually an over-50s team, he will continue to play but this season marks his last in the county championship.

If he were writing his end-of-career report, what would he say? “ ‘You were a good ’un.’ Simple. I don’t think there’s much more to say. The records speak for themselves. I’ve been a good player but it’s not something I dwell on.”

Early in Gough’s career, his talent led some to speculate that he could be the new Ian Botham but though he got far, he didn’t quite get that far. When the question suggests his England career could have been better than it was, he disagrees. “It is hard to say I should have had a better England career. I am the leading all-time wicket-taker for England, I am seventh on the list in Test match cricket. I played 58 Tests, got 229 Test wickets and if I had played 100 Test matches, I would have got 500 wickets. Simple. I didn’t do that because I had injuries. Part of that was the five operations I had in one year. England rushed me back because they knew I was their major strike weapon.”

I wish someone had said, ‘Listen, he ain’t playing this year’. That’s my one regret. With Fred [Flintoff] it took three operations for them to say, ‘We need to stop this’. When you’re the best player, they’re not bothered about the long-term consequences, they just want you back.”

He could never have been a Botham because he didn’t bat well enough. He could hit the ball, and sometimes so well that respected coaches would decide he could be transformed into a Test batsman. He would listen to the spiel about playing the percentages, not going after anything that was outside the stumps, forsaking his hook shot and when he tried to implement all that stuff, he destroyed what was good about his batting and got nothing in return.

Over the past few years, he returned to his instinctive ways and his batting, of course, improved. Last year he returned to Yorkshire and his captaincy of the team has coincided with an improvement in the county’s performance level. This season they lead the county championship, are in the quarter-finals of the Twenty20 Cup and have a semi-final against his old team, Essex, in the Friends Provident Trophy this Saturday at Chelmsford.

“When I came here, we were bottom, had just survived by half a point in the county championship, couldn’t win a one-day game and had never been in a Twenty20 quarter-final. I’ve come, we haven’t signed any players, but we’re doing a lot better. People said I was too old when I was brought back, that I wouldn’t make a difference. Yorkshire think I’ve made a difference, the club want me to do it again but it’s time for me to retire. I don’t believe there’s a player in the dressing room who would say a bad word about me and that means more to me than anything else.”

As he talks about his captaincy of Yorkshire and how he does the job, there is sincerity in his voice that makes you think he would be a good man to play with. “I am a people person and people have had problems at this club. Difficulties in their personal lives, off-the-field problems and they have always said that at Yorkshire, there was nobody to talk to and they kept things bottled up. The last person they had here wouldn’t have listened. I listen, I let people go back to their country for a break, I let people stay at home with their family when they’ve been having problems and I let them know I’m there for them, through thick and thin. And I know they’re desperate to do well for me and that’s the only difference I’ve made. But the lads here knew what I was like, they wanted me to come, many of them rang, Anthony McGrath said, ‘If you come back, I stay; if you don’t, I’m leaving’.

“Yorkshire hasn’t punched its weight for a long, long time, nobody knows why. We have the best youth set-up but for some reason, we lose them or they lose the plot between the ages of 19 and 23. I’ve worked at trying to make the young players feel comfortable here and I do think it is an advantage that Martyn [Moxon, Yorkshire director of cricket] and myself got away from Yorkshire during our careers. We brought things back, things that would not be the Yorkshire way, but it seems to be working.”

He watched Wasps play Leicester in the final of rugby’s Premiership, admired the way Wasps players made sure Lawrence Dallaglio had a great last day in the club shirt and he couldn’t stop himself thinking that, with a little luck, it could be him. If they beat Essex, they will then play the Friends Provident final at Lord’s, and what a send-off that would be for the captain. “Essex are desperate to get there,” he says, “we’re desperate. They will be favourites but we’ve got some serious talent in our side and if everyone fires . . . ”

Gough will retire at a time of great change in the game and, unluckily for him, at the moment when the best players can expect to earn considerably more than their predecessors. Sir Allen Stanford’s millions are on the table, the big-money Indian Premier League is growing and as he glances back towards the world he is leaving, he reckons it will take just three years for the elite players to be set up for life. But Stanford, the IPL, and television’s love for shorter forms of cricket comes with dangers for Test cricket.

“The next move is the ECB’s,” he says. “Everyone is waiting to see their next move. I know what I would like to see happen. Basically, the ECB are the ones who invented Twenty20 and they now have to get out of it. Not get out by stopping playing it, they have to promote a longer version of the game, which for me is still the most important. Players who think Twenty20 is the most important are thinking money, everybody else still thinks the longer form is the most important.

“The money that comes from Stanford should go to the county championship, the [county championship] winners should be getting £600,000 or £700,000, not £100,000. I’ve been offered a contract to go to India, a good offer, and I’m almost 38, but it was more important that I finish this season with Yorkshire. If any player chose the IPL over England, I’d be very disappointed. I’d lose a lot of respect for them. If England rang me up tomorrow and said, ‘Listen, we’re short, can you play a one-day international next week’, I’d say, ‘Yeah, of course I can’. Anytime. If I weren’t playing sport, I would probably be in the army. That’s who I am as a person.”

And what of the current England team?

"They are a good side. They’ve still got to develop in the one-day game but for Test match cricket, they’re gradually getting there. They still need that X-factor and for me, it’s Steve Harmison. I know he gets a lot of criticism but I look at the attack and think they’re all very much the same. If they’re going to beat the best, they need the X-factor. They need someone who spins it square or bowls at 90mph. If Flintoff’s not fit, Harmison should be playing.”

To be at his best, Harmison needs intelligent man-management?

“Very intelligent man-management, and I don’t think he’s getting that.”

Someone with your approach would do well with Harmison?

“I still speak with Steve. We get on really well. I have criticised him for some of the things I think he should improve but I have never criticised him for his commitment. Of all the England players I’ve played with, he’s in the top five for the effort he puts in. He is amazing, that guy. He gives everything on the cricket field and I mean that. It annoys me when people say he isn’t bothered about playing for England. He is.”

Presumably, he would like to play for you?

“He would. He actually said, in fact four or five of the England lads publicly said they wanted me as their bowling coach. There was talk about me being England coach, it was said I had applied for it but it’s not something I would apply for. If they asked me I would consider it but I’m not into all this Level 4 coaching before you can coach for your country. The guy with the Level 4 qualification; is he going to know more than the guy who’s been out there and done it? Who do you want when you’re bowling against Matthew Hayden and Adam Gilchrist in a one-day international? I will leave it at that.”

Flintoff is another player with whom he empathises. “Fred’s another one like myself. He knows what he has to do but doesn’t need too much time practising cricket. He will do his gym work, he can be obsessive about that, but if coaches keep telling him what to do all the time, he will just shut down. But he’s an amazing talent. The challenge for him is to get back to the player he was. I think he will be better than he was but it is a question of whether his ankle will stand up to playing nonstop.

“If it doesn’t, he will have to make a decision. It would kill him to have to stop Test cricket because that’s his main love but the irony is that he would make a lot more money playing Twenty20. If there’s one guy you want to see do well, it is him and I hope he has a fantastic summer. He gives a lot, does a lot for charity. A great guy.”

In the sunset into which he now rides, Gough envisages more time with his boys. His marriage to Anna ended six years ago and you wonder if that was the toughest part of his life. “I really don’t want to talk about that, I’m fine. That’s all you need to know, I’m fine.”

“Do you see the boys a lot?”

“I live with them.”

“That answers that?”

“Exactly.”

It was the boys and his mother, Christine, who persuaded him to do Strictly Come Dancing three years ago and, as a consequence, introduced him to the nation. Watched by a television audience of 12 million, Gough won that competition and two subsequent Christmas specials, the only person to win three times. “When my agent first mentioned it, I swore at him. ‘Don’t be f****** stupid.’ I had never danced in my life but I had rhythm. My only ambition was to survive week one and after that, I just didn’t want anyone to make a fool of themselves. Some cricketers get a little annoyed now because I am recognised more than them. We’re talking current-day internationals, even the captain of England, but I think it’s hilarious.”

Neither is it lost on him that a lifetime in cricket couldn’t do what a few Saturday nights on national television did. “When we won Strictly, it was just the same as when a big cricket match was won. I mean the feeling was just as good.”

“Would you be insulted if someone wrote on your tombstone, ‘Here lies the cricketer who won Strictly Come Dancing’.”

“No, I hope they put something like that. ‘Not only could he play cricket, he could dance as well’. I would love that.”

The ups and downs of Darren Gough

1994 Makes impact on Test debut, taking six wickets against New Zealand and scoring a 50. On the Ashes tour the following winter, he stars as he takes 20 wickets in three Tests and scores a stunning half-century to turn around the Sydney Test. Misses the final two Tests with a foot injury

1995 Misses half of the home series against the West Indies and is a peripheral figure on the winter tour to South Africa. Injury rules him out of home Test duty in 1996

1997 Misses the last two Tests of the home Ashes series with an inflamed knee, which also forces him out of the tour to the West Indies in 1998

1999 Becomes the first England player in 100 years to take a hat-trick in the Ashes

2000 Man of the series as England claim their first series triumph over the West Indies in 31 years. Plays a key role in the away win over Pakistan and Sri Lanka in 2000/01

2002 Splits from wife of eight years, Anna. He flies back early from the Ashes tour for knee surgery. He returns to play for England in 2003 but retires after two Tests against South Africa, with 229 wickets at an average of 28

2005 Wins the National League with Essex, and triumphs in the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing

2007 Returns to Yorkshire as captain, and leads the county to the semi-finals of this year’s Friends Provident Trophy

WIN TICKETS

The Sunday Times has teamed up with Friends Provident to give readers the chance to win a pair of tickets for one of the Trophy semi-finals between Durham and Kent at The Riverside, and Yorkshire and Essex at Chelmsford next week (visit friendsprovident.com/ cricket for more information). For your chance to win, email your answer to the following question to sporttickets@sunday-times.co.uk by noon, 1 July, along with your address and daytime phone number: Who are the current holders of the Friends Provident Trophy?

Gough on... STEVE HARMISON

We still speak. It annoys me when people say he isn’t bothered about playing for England. He is. He and four or five of the England lads publicly said they wanted me as their bowling coach

ANDREW FLINTOFF

If coaches keep telling him what to do all the time, he will just shut down. He’s an amazing talent and it’s taken him a long time to realise that