by Arunabha Sengupta
He was just 5’2”. Often one found him in the dressing room playing patience with his pack of cards, turning down offers of a drink because he feared displeasing his wife Ethel. Even when he ambled his five paces to the bowling crease, he looked as harmless as humanly possible.
Yet, according to Robertson-Glasgow, “Upon so many English batsmen [Alfred Percy ‘Tich’] Freeman imposed the belief that he could not be either played or hit.”
Batsmen generally stayed rooted in their crease when playing him, unable to read the leg-break from the googly or trying to keep out the top-spinner. If they ventured down the wicket, more often than not Les Ames whipped off the bails.
He was 31 when cricket restarted after the Great War. Before that he had played just one season, capturing 29 wickets. Then he started bowling again, for Kent and occasionally for England. In 1919, he had a quiet start with 60 wickets at 20.15. In 1920 he crossed 100 wickets for the first time, 102 at 17.54. That would be his worst haul for a summer, right to the day he would call it quits at the age of 48.
He improved by leaps and bounds through his 30s. 166 in 1921, 194 in 1922, 157 in 1923, 167 in 1924, 146, 180, 181 in the following years. You get the drift?
Actually you don’t. And no one can.
In 1928 he turned 40. That season captured 304 wickets. The only time the 300 mark has been breached in an English summer.
In 1933 he turned 45, and finished with 298, which remains the second highest haul in an English summer.
Two years before that he had taken 276 in 1931, which is fifth highest. A year before that 275 in 1930, the sixth highest.
From 1928 to 1933 he captured 250 plus wickets every season, for each of the six years. In the history of English cricket, all the other put together have done it six times.
It was not only he that entered the record books through his bowling deeds. In 1932 alone Les Ames stumped 64 batsmen off his bowling.
Age perhaps caught up with him after that, reducing Freeman’s hauls in the next two seasons, 1934 and 1935, to 205 and 212. That meant eight consecutive seasons with 200 plus wickets, 10 with 180 plus. After turning 40, his subsequent eight seasons brought him 2,090 wickets at 17.86. He was the leading wicket taker in all the eight seasons.
Freeman captured 3,776 First-Class wickets from 592 matches at 18.42. This puts him second on the all-time list. Wilfred Rhodes’s 4,204 wickets took him 1,110 matches.
Freeman leads the field with 386 five-wicket hauls, head, shoulders and torso ahead of the 287 of Rhodes. The 140 ten-wicket hauls are 49 more than Charlie Parker who is a speck in the distance with 91.
The Kent bowler’s hauls included three all-tens in an innings, one each in 1929, 1930 and 1931.
2,222 of the wickets were captured after his 40th birthday.
He had two poor Tests with the ball in Australia in 1924-25 but hit an unbeaten 50. He was not played in any Test when he went there in 1928-29. However, Freeman captured 66 wickets in all Test cricket, at 25.86, five five-fors, one ten-for. He is not recognised as a successful Test bowler. Yet, no English leg-spinner has taken that many wickets at a better average.
Freeman retired at the age of 48, after the 1936 season. It was a rather poor year for him. Just 110 wickets at 25.41.
In retirement, he named his house ‘Dunbowlin’.
‘Tich’ Freeman was born on 17 May 1888.