Fred Trueman took his ball home and never came back

FRED TRUEMAN’S funeral was at Bolton Abbey on July 6, 2006.

Alas, there was no public memorial service – on Trueman’s orders.

“When I’m dead and gone, I don’t want those two-faced b******s from Yorkshire and MCC who I didn’t get on with standing up and saying nice things about me,” was the gist of his instruction to family and friends.

In death, as in life, the rebel was rebelling, making his exit with all guns blazing.

It would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful farewell than the one afforded Trueman, or a more breathtaking final resting place than the grounds of Bolton Abbey on the banks of the Wharfe.

The mourners began arriving from 7am – or, to be precise, a certain Dickie Bird arrived at 7am.

As morning unfolded, the trickle became a steady procession. Brian Close rolled up in a Vauxhall Vectra, taking unusual care as he navigated the Priory’s narrow bends, while there was no mistaking Raymond Illingworth in his black Jaguar with number plate ‘ILLY’. Other Yorkshire team-mates included Bob Platt, John Hampshire, Richard Hutton, Bob Appleyard, Philip Sharpe, Bryan Stott, Doug Padgett and Vic Wilson.

One notable, however, was not in attendance. Four days earlier, Geoffrey Boycott had paid glowing tribute to Trueman at Headingley. Now the former opening batsman was conspicuous by his absence...

Never bosom buddies as team-mates, Trueman and Boycott had fallen out spectacularly during the 70s and 80s. Although they respected each other’s talent, that was about as far as it went...

In August, 1983, the decision to reprimand Boycott for slow scoring during a game against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham inadvertently triggered a revolution that led to the Yorkshire committee being overthrown – the nadir of Trueman’s 50 years in cricket...

A combination of widespread dissatisfaction with the old committee, complacent electioneering on their part and tireless campaigning from the Members 84 Group resulted in a landslide victory for Boycott and his supporters.

Trueman was annihilated – beaten is too soft a word – as he polled just 65 votes in the Craven district against the 128 of Peter Fretwell, a printer from Keighley.

Seventeen of the twenty-one Boycott candidates prevailed. The crowning indignity for the old guard came when Boycott – standing in his own district of Wakefield – beat Dr John Turner by 203 votes to 147, leading to the unique occurrence of a current professional serving on the general committee...

Boycott stubbornly clung to the dual role for the rest of a Yorkshire career that ended in 1986, thereby concluding the stormiest period in any county’s history.

For Trueman, the wounds of 1984 never healed. The greatest living name in Yorkshire cricket – greater even than Boycott – was snubbed by Yorkshire’s members in favour of someone with no connection to the first-class game.

To think those members had turned against him upset him more than anything else in his cricketing life.

Not even myriad mistreatments by the Yorkshire and England hierarchies came close to matching the pain he felt at being rejected by the county’s followers.

In echoes of his father’s gesture in burning his pit clothes after returning from his final shift at Maltby Main Colliery, Trueman threw out his old Yorkshire kit – items of priceless sentimental value – with barely a thought or tear. Shirts and sweaters, caps and flannels – all ended on the rubbish heap.

Although Yorkshire’s members had not voted against him as such, merely for Boycott’s reinstatement as a player, Trueman took their decision personally and blamed only one man – Boycott.

“Fred was shattered when he lost his committee seat,” said his widow Veronica. “Yorkshire cricket had been his life. To think the Yorkshire supporters didn’t want him; I don’t think he ever got over that. He’d given his all for them over the years and that was the thanks he got. Some of them even sent him hate mail.”...

To Trueman, the election defeat was the latest in a long line of cruel cuts and the final straw.

Now the man who’d been left to languish at home in Maltby when he fell injured at the start of his Yorkshire career, who’d been suspended for one game for not trying, who’d been turned down for a second benefit, who’d not been sent a telegram of congratulation by Yorkshire after becoming the first man in history to take 300 Test wickets, and who’d endured sundry other indignities, decided enough was enough.

He took his ball home and never came back.

It is one of the saddest aspects of the Trueman story – and one of the most depressingly avoidable – that he and Yorkshire effectively severed all ties after that committee split...

Given they were cricket’s answer to Cain and Abel, it is remarkable Trueman and Boycott ever made up, but in early 2003, a few months after Boycott got throat cancer, the unthinkable happened – and the cricket world was stunned.

Blithely dismissing 20 years of acrimonious differences in an eye-blink, Trueman telephoned Boycott to offer his support.

His concern for his one-time bete noire surprised friends, family and former team-mates alike.

“No one was more surprised than me,” said Rodney Trueman.

“I could have fallen over when Dad told me one day, ‘I’m going to see Geoff.’ I said, ‘Geoff who?’ He said, ‘Geoff Boycott.’ I said, ‘Dad, you’ve spent all my childhood hating Geoff Boycott and now you’re going to see him?’

“He said, ‘Well, he’s got cancer now – that’s different.’

“And that one sentence told me more about my dad than anything else could. That’s the man I loved, the man I respected. We’re all flawed human beings, and dad didn’t always know how to show his affections, or manage his very complex nature, but, deep down, he had a heart of gold.”...

“Fred was absolutely brilliant,” said Boycott, who has since made a brave recovery. “He used to ring every Sunday about 1pm, and although I wasn’t able to speak to him at first because I’d had this tube inserted and was struggling to talk, Rachael would speak to him and pass on his messages of goodwill.

“Fred was incredibly supportive and it meant a hell of a lot. I know he didn’t have to pick up the phone.”

• ‘Fred Trueman: The authorised biography’ by Chris Waters (Aurum, price £20, ISBN 978 1 84513 453 2). To order your copy of Fred Trueman at £18, saving £2 on rrp £20, please add £2.85 p&p. By phone: 01748 821122 Mon-Sat 9am-5pm. By post: Send cheque made payable to Yorkshire Books Ltd, 1 Castle Hill, Richmond DL10 4QP. www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/shop. Or call in at our reception in Wellington street, Leeds, Mon-Fri 9pm-5pm and save postage.