Fred Trueman
Frederick Sewards Trueman was born on 6th February 1931 in the village of Stainton, very close to Yorkshire's southern boundary with Nottinghamshire. In fact, only a few hundred yards of ploughland kept his birthplace from being in the neighbouring county and maintained Fred's essential qualification to play for Yorkshire.
His first club was Roche Abbey where, in his first four games, he took 25 wickets, at a cost of only 37 runs. Subsequently, his progress through the Federation side and the colts was rapid. He played his first game for Yorkshire, aged 18 years, at Cambridge University in May 1949. The Wisden entry described him as a slow, left arm bowler - perhaps the most monumental error in cricket's encyclopedia.
He was awarded his Yorkshire cap on 13th August 1951. In 1952 he played his first game for England, under Len Hutton as the country's first professional Test captain. In the third test, at Old Trafford, he totally demoralised the Indians by sheer pace and took eight for 31, still the best performance in England/India tests.
He became the first bowler in history to take 300 Test wickets at the Oval in 1964. The 67 Tests he played in were spread over 13 years. Some people say he should have been selected to play for his country many more times. If he had been, there is little doubt that he would have topped 400 test wickets.
He just missed 1,000 runs in tests (981) and took 64 catches. In all, he took 1,745 wickets for Yorkshire and scored 6,852 runs. His total haul of first class wickets was 2,304 - no other fast bowler in the history of the game can claim more. He bowled more than 20,000 overs.
The proudest moment of his career was when he led Yorkshire to victory over the touring Australians at Sheffield in 1968, after which he retired from the game.
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