Celebrating and beating Freddie!

Old cricketing legend: Freddie Trueman was a burly English, Yorkshire pacer of the ’50s and ’60s. Tireless, fast, he’d bowl 90 mph+ all day. Whenever his team needed him (or not), Freddie had his arm raised, ready to bowl, anytime in the day. There’s just one recorded instance, though, of Freddie being tired. On 15th Aug, 1964, aged 33, he got Neil Hawke caught at slip by Colin Cowdrey for his 300th test wicket, the 1st ever to do so. BBC thundered, “Take a bow, what you see today will never happen again. It’s taken a life time of fine gentlemen to get us here.” 

There’s a “Freddie” moment at OfBusiness every other day. A record tumbles fast in a fast growing firm. In Dec’18 alone, we broke our old marks for leads, sanctions and new customers. Some combination of fine gentle(wo)men pulls it off, and their mates take a bow.

On BBC, Freddie thought “300” was unreachable, “Aye, but whoever does it will be bloody tired.” But in his after-cricketer life, Freddie, now a regular on BBC radio, commentated live in Hadlee to 400, Walsh to 500, Warne to 600 and Murali well onto 800! 

Records are meant to be celebrated and broken. While each Freddie deserves a celebration, beating Freddie (Hadlee, Walsh…) are well on their way.