Talks with old English cricketers by A. W. Pullin

Author:A. W. Pullin
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2012-12-09T16:00:00+00:00

THE LATE GEORGE FREEMAN.

IT is a misnomer to call this chapter on George Freeman a Talk. The doyen of English fast bowlers died on November 18, 1895; the idea of these Talks, unfortunately, did not receive birth until a considerable time afterwards. Yet it has not been a difficult matter to collect from George Freeman's friends and contemporaries material for what, the writer trusts, will be considered an interesting chapter of reminiscences of one who was perhaps the greatest fast bowler English cricket has known.

It is customary even now to speak of George Freeman as the crack Malton player. To do so, however, is to mortally offend the residents of a little Yorkshire town not far away —Boroughbridge. It was while a member of the Malton Cricket Club that Freeman made a great name in first-class cricket; but to Boroughbridge belongs the distinction attached to Freeman's birthplace, and it was with the Boroughbridge Club that he received his initiation into the mysteries of bat and ball.

The first record of George Freeman's existence is to be found in the registry of the Boroughbridge Parish Church. This gives December 10, 1843, as the date of his baptism, "the son of Michael and Ann Freeman," the father's occupation a "mason and bricklayer." Freeman's birthplace was in the Horse Fair, but his parents and he afterwards resided for some years in a house on which now stands the York City and County Bank.

The esteemed vicar of Boroughbridge, the Rev. Canon Owen, who celebrated the jubilee of his vicariate in 1897, was George Freeman's earliest cricket tutor. It was he, too, who laid in the boy's heart the seeds of those high moral qualities which distinguished him as a cricketer and a man, and have caused his memory to be revered in Yorkshire as perhaps the memory of no other past cricketer has been to this day. It was in 1847, when George Freeman was a sturdy toddler of four years, that Canon Owen took up the vicariate of Boroughbridge, and in the parish church and schools under his guidance the lad grew and had his training.

"He was a very apt pupil," says Canon Owen. "We had various branches of athletics connected with the schools and village, and young George came out very well in them all. Moreover, he was always good-tempered, civil, and obliging. In his youngest cricketing days he had fairly the command of the ball in bowling, with the easy delivery for which he was so marked in after-life. My place was at the wicket, and I had a code of signals with him by which we used to attack the batsmen in their weak spots. Thus, if I thought he ought to send down a faster ball, I should rub my chin. Then, if I considered he was bowling a little bit short, I would raise my hat or cap; while, if I put up my right hand or the left, it was a signal to him what to do next ball.

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