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Andrew Caddick: 'I never believed my career was over because my back was buggered' © Getty Images

Andrew Caddick will open the bowling for England against New Zealand at Lord's in May. That, at least, is the view of Andrew Caddick.

"I will be back and I'll force their hand," he says of the England selectors. "I'll tell them they have to pick me because I'm taking wickets." This bold prediction matches Caddick's mood of forthright confidence. After all he has been bowling again since the end of January. This may not seem much of an achievement, but five months ago he was waking up in a Taunton hospital, delirious with morphine having had an operation to repair a prolapsed disc in his back. As he lay in bed for five days, he wondered if he would ever play cricket again.

"It was a shock. I wasn't ready to retire, I had a five-year plan for my cricket. That went out of the window and instead I was thinking about insurance payouts and worrying about this, that and the other. The hospital sent me a letter before the surgery telling me the chances of coming out of the operation without any feeling in my legs, or being left paralysed. The percentages were pretty small, but it gave me something to think about. I never believed my career was over because my back was buggered, you know. I'll get over it and get back to where I was when I last played for England."

He is speaking in the bar at Taunton, where the curtains, the seat covers and the drinks mats are done out in Somerset maroon. Caddick is also part of the furniture. He has been here since 1991 and is as recognisable in the town as a kiwi fruit in a basket of cider apples. He is a high tower, another Taunton spire alongside the coronets of St Mary Magdalene and St James, which overlook the county ground.

Outside it is clear and cold and the groundsman is lapping the outfield on his tractor, dragging a metal frame across the grass. In about six weeks Caddick will be pressing his bowler's mark into the same turf, hoping for an early harvest of spring wickets. Somerset will play four first-class matches before the first Test of the summer against New Zealand at Lord's, which starts on May 20. Has he set a target for how many wickets he wants from those games? "Forty-eight," he replies with a grin. Then he reconsiders. "I'd say twenty-five, although thirty would be better."

It is well over a year since Caddick last played a Test match for England. At Sydney, with the Ashes long gone, Caddick took 10 for 215 in the traditional why-couldn't-we-have-played-like-this-earlier win over Australia. Even then, his back had been troubling him. He missed the third Test at Perth and although he recovered for the rest of the Ashes and the World Cup, wearing a special cast for a misdiagnosed foot injury early in the 2003 season made his back unstable once again.

"When it went, I was just pottering around the house," he remembers. "I turned round to do something and that was that. The surgeon showed me the scan with the disc bulging out. I knew my season was over and I thought my career could be too."

His ambition now might be to get back in the England side but back in October he had a more basic aim: to walk a hundred yards without falling over. He had come home from hospital with a four-inch scar on his lower back and a sense of relief that the surgeons had done their work properly. "The strength had come back in my toes, which I'd lost before the operation, and the waterworks were functioning OK. Standing up made me dizzy, but fairly soon I was walking again."

While his England team-mates were sweating their way through a tour of Bangladesh, Caddick was at home, doing some light weights and gentle sit-ups to strengthen his abdominal muscles. He was coming to the bottom of his bottle of painkilling tablets, but would continue taking anti-inflammatory drugs until the New Year. It was then that he started running, not risking the frosty lanes around his house, but instead doing 10 minutes on a treadmill, adding a further minute each day.

In mid-January came the big moment. Caddick had a cricket ball in his hands at the Taunton indoor nets and was ready to bowl off a couple of paces. He was excited but uncertain how his back would feel afterwards. It was his first big test. "It was a great relief to feel no pain. Until I started bowling I didn't know whether I was better. After a couple of overs I was coming in off a good short run-up. There was a little discomfort, but I had no real complaints."

Caddick had hoped to recover in time for England's tour of the West Indies. It was an unrealistic prospect, so instead I ask him to play at being a selector and pick the best bowlers he would have sent to the Caribbean, imagining that all those on the short list were fit and playing well. AR Caddick is first on the list, followed by Jones, Harmison and Anderson. Giles will also play. I suggest that he would quite fancy leading the attack with the youngsters as his lieutenants. Jones, he says, is shaping up to be the best of the lot. "I was bitterly disappointed when he did his knee at Brisbane on the Ashes tour. He'd been bowling bloody well in the warm-ups and had got his control right. He's ready for the job. But, having said that," (and Caddick likes nothing better than an `ah but' now and then), "it will always be difficult for him. The knee is such a complicated joint and takes a hell of a pounding. He could be afflicted with problems for the rest of his career."

No room for Matthew Hoggard? "I think he has to accept that he will only be called upon in certain situations," replies Caddick, and with a rather wonderful slip of the tongue, goes on to describe Hoggard as the "Andrew Bicknell" (as opposed to Bichel) of English cricket. "If everybody is fit, he won't play. Simple as that. Unfortunately, that is the reality of Test cricket."

Caddick's own performances for the Test side since 1993 have brought whoops of fist-pumping joy and moments of hair-tearing frustration. There is no getting away from the discrepancy between his first-innings bowling figures (131 wickets at 37.06) and his bowling in the second innings (103 wickets at 20.81). Caddick sighs and rolls his eyes before saying wearily: "Has Mike Selvey been talking again? The facts are that more of my Test wickets have come in the first innings. You can sit there and talk about the difference, but the state of the game changes in the second innings."

'The facts are that more of my Test wickets have come in the first innings' © Getty Images

But those first innings wickets have been much more expensive, haven't they? "They have, but ... well, it's like anything. The tone of the match is set pretty quickly in the first innings and batsmen can be a lot more blasé about what they do when batting because it's irrelevant to the game." Irrelevant? Surely not. "The second innings is more relevant because you've got to bowl them out for 400 or get 400. Simple mathematics. Once you know the state of the game, then I've always felt that's when the job needs to be done. Also, I do find that batsmen relax against me more in the first innings but well, it's irrelevant. It doesn't matter when you take your bloody wickets so long as you win the match."

He doesn't get the chance to continue because Peter Anderson, Somerset's chief executive bustles past. "Don't listen to any of his bullshit," Anderson advises. At the time, Caddick was negotiating with Anderson for a new contract at Somerset. "This is the chief exec," Caddick jokes. "He's a tight-fisted git." Mischief maker Anderson then says to his fast bowler: "You're only as good as your last game you know." Caddick's riposte: "And you're only as good as your last smile ... whenever that was."

I wonder if the contract negotiations were conducted in a similar style. If they were, the banter worked because Caddick, 35, will now stay at Somerset for another four seasons. Before he signed, it was common knowledge that Caddick had been approached by Warwickshire as well as a couple of other counties. But he won't say who. What he did say was that he was determined to get a good price for his services. "I was out of contract with England and Somerset. So it was in my interests to get the best possible deal for myself. I want to stay at Somerset and I don't want to go anywhere else, but I'm not going to sell myself short. I'm going to make hay while the sun shines. When I stop playing, it's going to be a big job for me to sort my life out and I want to continue with the sort of lifestyle I have at the moment."

That means his county corn will have to be swelled by money from Test matches. If he does win back his place, he will find himself taking orders from a new skipper. Has that crossed his mind? "Well, a captain's a captain really," is the laconic reply. "Having said that, Nasser Hussain was brilliant. He was regimental, the sort of guy who'd be like, `Oi, do as you're told'. And we needed someone like that at the time. We needed someone to say `stop f***ing about and just get on with the job'. Atherton was totally different. He led from the front, but I don't think he was quite there to get the best out of the other players. Nass was hands on and he and Duncan Fletcher turned English cricket around. Vaughany is a lot more diplomatic. I wouldn't say he was forgiving but ... well, Nasser was in your face and that was what it needed."

He pauses, perhaps conscious that Vaughan may have some influence over his immediate future. "Vaughany's managerial skills are a lot better," he decides. "It all depends on how people respond to his style. There are some youngsters in that side now. If they weren't performing, Hussain would have given them the shock treatment. Other times you need to go the softly-softly way. It's a matter of knowing how to get the best out of each player."

Before he came to England, Caddick was a plasterer and tiler. In front of him was an empty wall and a box of tiles. He knew what was expected of him and everything fitted into place neatly. Caddick seems to like to play his cricket the same way. That is why he prefers Hussain to Atherton; perhaps that is why he often bowls better in the second innings that the first. Despite claiming to be outspoken and brash, he actually seems happier when he is being told what to do. He is conservative, but also sensitive and honest. And - although he denies it - he seems to fret about the parts of life that aren't so easy to control. His strategy has been to bowl at life straight and just short of a length because he knows he can do it, and fewer experiments lead to fewer mistakes.

We shake hands in the car park. Caddick folds himself into a silver BMW convertible and roars away. The space he was parked in says "Reserved for Ambulances". It is a lovely Caddick moment and hopefully not an omen. Whatever it means, Caddick would be able to convince himself - if not anyone else - that there was a good reason for parking there.