YP Letters: Cricketing great was not always '˜Fiery Fred'

I READ with interest Peter Tummons’s “possibly apocryphal story” about Fred Trueman (The Yorkshire Post, February 9). Though I never met him, I have an impression of the great bowler that is sometimes at odds with the popular image of “Fiery Fred”. If I am wide of the mark I would happily defer to those who knew him.

Some of the stories, if not apocryphal, were told by other cricketing wags but, with the passage of time were ascribed to Fred who was, nonetheless, a fine after-dinner speaker. Nor was he the wild rebel, hostile to the privately educated players with whom he shared the dressing room. He would have been disgusted by the level of inane abuse which is endemic at the top of the modern game. He let his bowling do the talking.

He looked awkward presenting a dreadful TV show based on pub indoor games and, if not hypocritical, his commercials for a Northern beer might have surprised friends who knew him to be a gin and tonic man. He was much more at home as an establishment figure in the Test Match Special commentary box with Blowers, Johnners and Trevor Bailey.

My abiding memory of Fred Trueman, however, is that bowling action: a thing of unparalleled beauty in sport.