"Ted Dexter, the captain, was considering giving Peter Parfitt a bowl but I wasn't having that," recalls Trueman. "I took the ball and soon bowled Ian Redpath. Denis Compton, who was commentating, said Redpath was beaten by a straight half-volley. In fact it pitched just outside off stump, cut back and took middle. Some people never gave me any credit.
"Graham McKenzie went first ball, caught by Colin Cowdrey at first slip. I was on a hat-trick and 299 Test wickets. But it was 1.30, lunchtime, and the umpires, Charlie Elliott and Jack Crapp, took us off."
Trueman concentrated for every second of those 40 minutes as he sat in the dressing room, sipping a cup of tea, slowly munching a sandwich, pondering his next delivery, which would be to his great friend and fellow-fast bowler Neil Hawke.
The Australian told Trueman as they left the field for lunch: "I hope I'll be your 300th Test wicket – it's the only way I'll be remembered in Test history."
Hawke did not need to play at the hat-trick delivery and he hung around long enough to make a few runs but he soon entered the record books: c Cowdrey b Trueman 14. He was then quick to proffer his hand and say "well bowled."
Trueman remembers being surrounded by applauding team-mates.
"They were sure they were part of a feat which would never be repeated," says Trueman.
Now the record is over 400 wickets but he makes a valid point: "I played 67 Tests in 13 years. They play that many in five years these days.
"I could have played a lot more but a lot of people didn't like me. I put much of their resentment down to jealousy."
But on that Saturday afternoon Fred Trueman was a national hero. At the time he had a weekly column with the Sunday People newspaper and his sports editor Frank Nicklin had pleaded: "Take your 300th on a Saturday afternoon." That was simply to ensure that his editions the following day carried the full story.
"Can't promise that," Trueman had replied. When he obliged Nicklin came up with a case of vintage Champagne.
After the day's play Trueman was feted in the West End. Comedian Leslie Crowther and singers Dai Francis, John Boulter and Tony Mercer, the stars of The Black and White Minstrel Show, invited him on stage at the Victoria Theatre.
"An Aussie in the audience started yapping but Leslie shouted him down in a flash," smiles Trueman. "I had to leave that show and go to another, Pickwick starring Harry Secombe. He presented me with a tape-recorder complete with a recording of the 300th wicket. I still have it."
Only one sour note spoiled the celebrations – he did not receive a telegram of congratulation from Yorkshire.
"When I asked why, I was told it had not been possible because the president, Sir William Worsley, was in Hong Kong visiting his daughter. I wondered why it was necessary to call a meeting to do such a simple thing but received no answer."
That day at the Oval was one of many great days in Trueman's magnificent career, another had come at Headingley on July 8 three years earlier. Again Australia were the opposition and again Trueman took the initiative.
On the third afternoon of the match Australia were batting for the second time, having made 237 in the first innings to which England had replied with 299. It was a slow, turning wicket and Trueman had been pleading with Peter May, the captain, to let him bowl, not the usual flat-out fast but rather slower, off a shorter run, cutting the ball into the batsman, taking full advantage of the pitch.
May had ignored Trueman's suggestion but during the lunch break Wilf Wooller, the former captain of Glamorgan, had happened across the England captain and engaged him in conversation.
Wooller remembered a match between Yorkshire and Glamorgan when Trueman had taken six wickets with his off-cutters and won the match.
"Give Fred a chance," was the gist of his advice to May. The afternoon was ebbing quietly away when May at last relented, asking Trueman to bowl an over from the Kirkstall Lane End, ostensibly to allow his spinners David Allen and Tony Lock to change ends.
"Australia were reduced to nothing in four overs," said Trueman, pride masking the understatement. In 24 deliveries he took five wickets for no runs, Australia slumped from 102-3 to 109-8 and were dismissed for 120, leaving England to make 62 to win, which they achieved for the loss of two wickets.
"I received hundreds of letters after that," recalled Trueman. "Most of them were accompanied by the tickets for the two days play which were not required. There were no refunds in those days."
Trueman is never happier than when talking cricket. Time stands still as his opinions, memories and arguments flow.
His enthusiasm for the game is undimmed. Thumbing through a 1900 Yorkshire handbook he speaks in awe of the achievements of Wilfred Rhodes and George Herbert Hirst, two of only nine players to take 2,000 first-class wickets and score over 20,000 runs (and is proud to add that Raymond Illingworth, a colleague for so long, is a third Yorkshireman in that august company).
He points, without a hint of accusation, that for all his success for England, Matthew Hoggard – "a lovely lad" – is now bowling with his feet in the wrong position and has allowed his right arm to drop.
He recalls the day in 1946 when he was discovered by Cyril Turner as a 15-year-old, playing among men at the Herringthorpe Road ground in Rotherham; he remembers the day at the Grand Hotel in Sheffield when he was the youngest player present and David Denton the oldest when Yorkshire and Lancashire met in 1949, 150 years after the first Roses match; he recites verbatim a Yorkshire committee minute which records "T Emmett, the Yorkshire, England and Halifax professional, will captain Yorkshire in the absence of a gentleman."
He remembers, irony camouflaging long-held disappointment, missing out on the successful tour of Australia in the winter of 1954-5. "I had had a bad season, only 145 wickets," he confesses, adding pointedly that not one among the quartet of Frank Tyson, Brian Statham, Peter Loader and Trevor Bailey, who were all selected for that tour, had topped 100 wickets.
"Take 145 wickets in a season these days and you would earn £200,000-a-year and be awarded a 10-year contract," he reckons.
Now approaching 74, Fred Trueman is still in demand as an after-dinner speaker – "I could do 10 or 12 a month if I wanted to," he says. He plays golf twice a week at Ilkley, delighted that the arrival of a new driver has given him an extra 30 yards off the tee; enjoys the idyllic garden of the bungalow in the Dales where he has spent the last 34 years; walks the surrounding hills with Alfie, his Old English sheepdog; supports the Variety Club of Great Britain and his church at Bolton Abbey – where former colleague Bob Appleyard ("one of the great bowlers of all time, 700 wickets in five seasons") is also a regular attender; he watches Test cricket on TV but cannot remember the last time he saw Yorkshire in action.
He worries about the health of Geoffrey Boycott, who scored a second-innings century in the drawn match in which Trueman took his 300th Test wicket, but he rarely sees the team-mates with whom he won county championships.
Life is good for Fred Trueman and tonight, maybe in the company of a glass of fine wine, as he recalls that great day in 1964, the memories will be of the good times. "It's no good worrying about the others," he says, typically forthright. "The record books tell the story."
Indeed they do.
yp.sport@ypn.co.uk