The leading man of Leeds

Fred Trueman at Headingley, Leeds in 1992. Pic/Getty Images

Is James Anderson England's greatest fast bowler? His statistics - 626 wickets in 164 completed Tests - lend much truth to the billing. But one England fast bowler may have disagreed. "The Greatest Fast Bowler Who Ever Drew Breath," that paceman once reportedly said in a lighter vein during a discussion on what to call his biography.

The ‘he' I am referring to is Frederick Sewards Trueman, whose much-loved home ground Headingley is where India and England are doing battle in the third Test of the Pataudi Trophy series.

The Test provides good reason to remember Trueman. It is here where he played a big part in that famous 0 for 4 wickets scenario which India endured at Leeds in 1952.

Twenty-one-year-old Trueman was making his debut as the Vijay Hazare-led India batted first. He didn't get his preferred Kirkstall Road end and had no qualms in saying in his book, Ball of Fire that his captain Len Hutton made a mistake by giving senior bowler Alec Bedser that end.

Trueman's 3-89 played a part in India being bowled out for 293, to which England responded by scoring 334. The debutant got his choice of end when India batted for the second time. Trueman claimed three - Pankaj Roy, Madhav Mantri and Vijay Manjrekar while Bedser got DK Gaekwad - all before India's first run figured on the scoreboard.

Trueman played a big role in England's series win over India that summer - 29 wickets - including 8 for 31 inside nine overs at Old Trafford.

He came into the Test match scene with quite a reputation for bowling sides out quickly. He hailed from Maltby, where his father worked as a miner. At 16, he was invited to the Yorkshire nets at Leeds and the sight of the Headingley ground bowled him over. A field which grew turnips was all he could compare it with. He bowled 11 balls in the nets and hit the stumps thrice. A discussion ensued between his accompanying father and two influential men in Yorkshire cricket - Cyril Turner and George Hirst. His father wouldn't speak to him on the bus ride back home until the vehicle headed to Doncaster, where Trueman Sr uttered: "It's going to cost me six pounds, but I don't care about that. You've been picked for the Federation tour and you're going."

Making his Test debut in 1952, Trueman went from strength to strength, picking up wickets regularly, pulverising the opposition and courting controversy through his straight-talking ways and aggressive bowling. For example, on the 1953-54 tour to the West Indies, he revealed that a batsman called him a White English Bastard during a tour game. The batsman was threatened with serious consequences if he repeated the abuse. The Caribbean batsman did, and had his jaw and teeth broken with the repairs done in hospital.

There came a point when England captains feared they would not be able to handle him on tours and hence he was left out on a few occasions. Trueman was intolerant, temperamental but was also hauled up in cases of mistaken identity. He was convinced that there was a lookalike up to some mischief all the time.

This also affected his marriage. He married Enid, the daughter of the former mayor of Scarborough, in 1955. By 1961, Trueman's marriage was in tatters. As mentioned in Ball of Fire, he claimed six wickets in one hour in the Leeds Test against Australia and the media called it the finest piece of fast bowling ever seen. But little did they know that he had spent the previous night at the back of his car in a Leeds car park, "with an overcoat as a blanket, arriving at the ground before anyone else so that I could have a wash and shave. There had been another row".

Trueman went down in history as the first bowler to claim 300-plus Test wickets and he loved bowling at Headingley, where he claimed 44 wickets in nine Tests.

In April 1968, Trueman figured in a cyclone relief match for India Prime Minister's XI against Bombay Cricket Association President's XI at the Brabourne Stadium. He opened the bowling with Test pacer Umesh Kulkarni, who recalled Trueman spending a lot of time with him, talking about fast bowling. "He never gave me the impression that he was too big a name [highest wicket-taker in world cricket then] to talk to a fast bowler, who had just played for his country. He was warm and generous with his time and views; a lovely man," Kulkarni told me yesterday.

A lot of his post-playing career was spent in the commentary box and he wrote for the Sunday People. Trueman was candid in print too. He was an ace after-dinner speaker and some of his funny comments were not always politically correct. That said, he was a generous host. My late cricket writer friend Ted Corbett was Trueman's ghost writer for several years. Ted's partner Jo King told me yesterday that Ted and she were in the vicinity of Trueman's Yorkshire home a few years before the cricket legend's 2006 death. When he learnt about this, he insisted they spend some time with him. "Fred was a one-man army as it were, regaling us with stories at breakfast next morning," Jo told me yesterday.

It was Ted who Trueman's wife Veronica telephoned during the England v Sri Lanka ODI at Leeds so that the media would learn of her husband's passing. Lung cancer claimed Trueman's wicket at 75, but the dreaded C was only one of the few things Trueman succumbed to.

The landscape of Headingley, Leeds is much different from what it was when Trueman first stepped on its turf in the late 1940s. But nothing has changed where Trueman's reputation is concerned. Fiery Fred he will always be. I almost forgot: Trueman would have been happy to see India's present fast bowling arsenal. But he would still say he was ‘The Greatest Fast Bowler Who Ever Drew Breath'.

mid-day's group sports editor Clayton Murzello is a purist with an open stance. He tweets @ClaytonMurzello
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