As it was: The Memoirs of Fred Trueman - Fred Trueman
Fiery? No, misunderstood
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Mercifully, this memoir does not wholly live up to such a cornily tub-thumping opening spell. In fact, it is an honest to goodness old-fashioned read, even un-put-downably compelling for us of a certain generation.
No other genuinely fast bowler will ever take more first-class wickets than Fred's 2,304. Test matches began in 1876 and it was all of 88 years before a bowler of any type posted what we considered in 1964 to be an incredible 300 Test wickets. And as he says (and he was right) it should have been 400 if the selectors hadn't been vengeful class-ridden ninnies: "Some of them did not like my forthright attitude, which they misinterpreted as being `bolshy'. Rather than pick the best 11 players for the job, the selection committee would often choose someone because he was, in their eyes, a gentleman and a decent chap."
When he did get picked for the occasional MCC tour, his Marylebone managers were none too clever either. For instance, in Australia in 1958-59 Freddie Brown was "a snob, bad-mannered, ignorant, and a bigot".
After retirement from cricket in 1968 there was a lonely, chilling, and telling disillusion till he was rescued by a saintly smasher of a second wife Veronica (he is authentically candid and touching here on both his marriages). Trueman had been longtime (43 years) a-spade's-a-spade Sunday columnist on the People and began his 27-year span of increasingly dark Heathcliff mutterings on Test Match Special in 1974, ever more bewildered by "what's going off down there". There were also cabaret clubs and after-dinner speeches ... and thus the one-time athlete of heroic grandeur and craft-versed skill was seen (by many, anyway) as a bit of a joke, a throwback reactionary, a living caricature almost and, certainly, that personification of the unmitigated bore, the Professional Yorkie.
With this new book, the old boy (74 this winter) brusquely clears up all such slanders. He has been extremely well served by his collaborator and friend Les Scott, an experienced sportsman's "ghost" who writes excellently - there is a particularly rich, graphic essay on Fred's unforgettable first Test (India 0 for 4, Trueman 3 for 0) at Headingley in 1952. Good, seriously considered and valuable stuff, too, on present-day techniques at either end of the 22 yards and, to take his sweater and sign off, a nicely typical FST glossary of modern cricketing terms, including:
Allrounder - Player who is average at more things than the average player. Spinner - Slow medium-pacer with short run-up. True character of the game - Wears an earring. Nice one, Sir Frederick, nice one, son.
Rating 4/5
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