Fred Trueman

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Fred Trueman England (ENG)

Batting style	Right-hand bat
Bowling type	Right-arm fast
	Tests	First-class
Matches	67	603
Runs scored	981	9231
Batting average	13.81	15.56
100s/50s	-/-	3/26
Top score	39*	104
Balls bowled	15178	99701
Wickets	307	2304
Bowling average	21.57	18.29
5 wickets in innings	17	126
10 wickets in match	3	25
Best bowling	8/31	8/28
Catches/stumpings	64/-	439/-
Test debut: 5 June 1952 Last Test: 17 June 1965 Source: [1]

Frederick Sewards Trueman OBE (February 6, 1931 – July 1, 2006) was a Yorkshire and England cricketer, regarded as one of the greatest fast bowlers in history. Known as Fiery Fred, he was first man to take 300 Test wickets, and later became a popular and outspoken radio summariser.

1 Biography
2 Trivia
3 External links
4 References

[edit] Biography

Trueman was born in Stainton near Maltby, West Riding (now South Yorkshire). He was educated at Maltby Grammar School. His capturing six wickets for one run against a top English league side at the age of fifteen attracted the attention of Yorkshire County Cricket Club. He made his first-class debut for Yorkshire in 1949, and quickly cemented himself at county level. He rose rapidly through the English cricketing ranks, becoming one of the best of his generation's truly fast bowlers.

Not particularly tall for a fast bowler at 5 foot 10, he nevertheless made good use of his wide shoulders and strong legs to produce genuine pace from his classic sideways-on action. Gary Sobers regarded him as one of the finest fast bowlers he ever played against. "Fiery Fred", as he was known, also taunted batsmen with his Yorkshire humour and the icy glare that went with his aggressive nature. He made a sensational debut in Test cricket in 1952, helping to reduce the Indian second innings to four wickets down for no runs, working up tremendous pace to shake up the Indian batsmen.

Trueman was the first man to take 300 Test wickets, and no doubt could have taken many more had it not been for numerous clashes and problems with the Yorkshire and England cricketing hierarchies.

Trueman took 2,302 first class wickets (including four hat tricks) at an average of 18.27, and 307 Test wickets at an average of 21.54. He also holds the record for most consecutive first-class matches played (67) in which he took a wicket. He reappeared in six one-day matches for Derbyshire in 1972. Trueman also played football with Lincoln City F.C. during his spell of national service in the RAF.

Fred Trueman's memoirs.

His first class career spanned twenty years (1949–1969), a remarkably long time for a fast bowler, and when he did eventually hang up his boots he became renowned for telling tall stories and anecdotes from his cricketing past. Trueman wrote a column for a Sunday newspaper for 43 years and became an after-dinner speaker, which earned enough for him to have a large bungalow in the Yorkshire Dales and a Rolls Royce — with the number plate FST 307.

In the 1970s Trueman presented the Yorkshire Television ITV programme Indoor League, which was broadcast at 5.15pm on a Thursday evening, after the children's programmes^[1]. This show had a notably Northern, working class focus, and featured pub games such as darts (broadcast for the first time on television), bar billiards, shove ha'penny, skittles and arm-wrestling. Trueman anchored the programme with a pint of bitter and his pipe to hand, and signed off each week with his catchphrase, "I'll sithee".

Famous for his dislike of many aspects of the modern game, especially one-day cricket and the injury rate of fast bowlers, Trueman was criticized by some, such as Ian Botham, for being unduly negative about modern players and for glorifying cricket "in my day". He was an expert summariser for the BBC's Test Match Special radio cricket commentaries for many years, and his catch phrase, "I don't know what's going off out there," summed up his dismay that modern cricketers lacked his knowledge of tactics. He was nevertheless respected for his unsurpassed knowledge of the mechanics of fast bowling, and many feel he should have been used as a bowling coach for England's under-achieving sides of the 1980s and 1990s^{[citation needed]}.

He was made an OBE in 1989, though, after Brian Johnston, a colleague on Test Match Special, had bestowed on him the nickname "Sir Frederick", there were those who thought he had really been knighted.^[2]

Diagnosed with small cell carcinoma in May 2006,^[3] he succumbed to the disease on 1 July 2006, and died at Skipton in North Yorkshire.^[4]^[5]

[edit] Trivia

In the 1990s, he discovered that his mother's mother had been Jewish, making him Jewish in Jewish law. He said that he was happy to be called Jewish.^[6]
Trueman made a guest appearance in "Dad's Army", a popular British television series.
Trueman and Henry Blofeld appeared as the cricket commentators in the "Tertiary Phase" of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series.