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Sporting Heroes: Fred Trueman

Posted on | December 15, 2009 | 2 Comments

In the first of an occasional series Geoffrey brings to life some of the immortals from his past.

Yorkshire are to honour one of the greatest fast bowlers of all time when they open the new £22million pavilion at Headingley next summer and dedicate one of the prime enclosures to Fred Trueman, the first man to take 300 wickets in Test matches.

Fred was my favourite bowler, one of the best I’ve ever seen or played against with the most perfect action you could ever wish to see. Poetry in motion. Exactly what you would want to teach any youngster; smooth, accelerating run up, sideways on delivery looking through the left arm with perfect poise and balance.

He bowled the most gorgeous outswinger at a real nasty pace and if you think of Waqar Younis producing those toe crushing in swinging yorkers, well Fred could do exactly the same with his outswinger and, like Waqar, do it at will.

He was one of the few bowlers I have seen who could genuinely bowl to a 7-2 split field (seven fielders on the off side and only two on the leg). When some captains try it most bowlers deliver the ball too wide of off stump for fear of being hit though the on side where there are only two fielders. But Fred was always difficult to work through the leg side because of the outswing and his tremendous control. Such control, in fact, that in seven seasons playing with him I can’t remember him ever delivering anything like Steve Harmison’s first ball of the Brisbane Test which ended up in second slip’s hands.

When he first arrived at the Yorkshire indoor winter nets he was raw, fast and sprayed it about a bit but in those conditions, with poor lighting, the nets close together and the rest of the players on top of you there was a feeling of claustrophobia and a young quick bowler was the last thing you wanted coming at you. When batters were asked by Arthur ‘Ticker’ Mitchell, the coach, what they thought about the young Trueman they all admitted how quick he was but stressed how wild he was too. The shrewd Mitchell laughed and said: “Just think how good he’ll be when we’ve taught him to bowl straight”.

The Indians found out how fast he was in 1952 when Fred made his debut at Headingley and they were reduced to nought for 4. They were terrified of him because they’d never seen pace like that and he had 28 wickets in the four match series while still doing his National Service in the RAF but played in only seven home Tests in the next five years.

Fred missed 29 out of 36 Tests after that India series so just think what he might have achieved on top of his magnificent record of 307 wickets at 21.57, one every 49 balls. He held the world record for most Test wickets for nearly 12 years.

To listen to Fred after his retirement you’d think he was some kind of angel. He was not a drinker, just the odd pint, which most people find hard to believe. But he used to swear profusely on the field though not at the batsmen or umpires but at the nicks or the balls that beat the bat. One of his favourites was to stare down the pitch at some hapless lad, that black mane falling over his eyes rolling up the sleeve which always unfurled in his delivery, and snarl: “Tha’s got more edges than a broken chamber pot”. I used to love to be at mid off or mid on to hear the banter.

In that era, the early sixties, there were less nets than now but Fred got through twice as many overs as current bowlers manage in competitive matches. Fred, like Brian Statham and Alec Bedser were well oiled machines and two or three balls to loosen up in the first over and then they were off full pelt. Current players are certainly ‘gym fitter’ than those of the past but they are not ‘match fit’. Those old bowlers used to get through 1,000 overs a season and were well grooved. Nowadays there’s too much resting and never in the history of the game has there been a player who got better by playing less.

Between 1959 and 1963 he was without doubt the greatest fast bowler in the world with 776 wickets, 180 of them for England. In back to back Tests against the 1963 West Indians with Conrad Hunte, Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher, Gary Sobers and Frank Worrell in the side he took 11 for 152 at Lord’s and 12 for 119 at Edgbaston. Two years earlier he had 11 for 88 Against Australia at Headingley taking five for 16 in one spell of fast stuff in the first innings and in the second bowling off cutters to have five wickets in 24 deliveries without cost. I doubt we shall ever see his like again.

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Comments

2 Responses to “Sporting Heroes: Fred Trueman”

  1. Vivek Tulsidas
    January 7th, 2010 @ 8:08 pm

    Hello Geoffrey,

    I am a huge fan of yours. I have heard you talk so much about Fred Trueman that I decided to go watch some very old footage of Fred Trueman in action. I was curious about his action more than anything else. Cricket fans like myself have not had the privilege to watch a lot of genuine fast bowlers in action.

  2. Steven Callaghan
    January 11th, 2010 @ 2:35 pm

    I was a young man of 9 years old when watching the England v. West Indies series you mention above Geoffrey, what great memories.

    All young English fast bowlers wanted to be Fred in the same way that West Indians were always Wesley Hall. I don’t think younger people brought up on modern cricket can really appreciate what top class fast bowling was really like and you were facing on uncovered pitches for a time with rudimentary safety equipment – no helmets, useless battig gloves and flimsy bats compared with today’s railway sleepers.

    Fred, Hall and Griffiths, Lillie and Thompson, Holding, Garner, Marshall, Roberts, Croft et al you faced them all and I think your stats should be weighted to reflect that!

    Oh, and that Sobers fella wasn’t bad either…..

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