Flintoff claims he was shot at

Andrew Flintoff, the star of England’s recent Ashes victory, has chosen the series aftermath as the opportune moment to release his new book, Being Freddie. In an exerpt from the book published in The Times, Flintoff relates what actually occured on the last English tour of India during what the media described as “crowd disturbances”.

Flintoff claims that while he was in the field he was struck by something from the crowd, and looked down and saw pellets from an air pistol on the ground, which had apparently been fired at him. Play was held up briefly while Flintoff relayed the story to captain Nasser Hussein, but Flintoff was allegedly told by the ECB media relations manager Andrew Walpole not to mention the incident during his press conference the next day. Flintoff criticised the way the situation was handled by the ECB in his book, but has not discussed the matter in the intervening years.

Delhi cricket officials, on the other hand, claim that the story is false and that if it had been true the ECB would have made a bigger issue about it at the time. True or not, the story is likely to both increase the popularity of Flintoff’s new book and offer an extra talking point as England prepare to tour the subcontinent at the end of the year for series in both Pakistan and India.