How Freddie Flintoff ditched his boozy cricketer image to clean up and become a TV star after opening up on his battles with bulimia and depression

Swapping the field for the camera is almost a mandatory move these days for retiring players, regardless of the sport.

But while the majority trade their place on the field for a spot in the commentary box, the sight of professional athletes becoming TV presenters remains somewhat rare.

Rarely have they been more successful at both than Freddie Flintoff, who moved seamlessly from one of England’s greatest ever cricketers to a much-loved TV star.

The last role almost cost him his life when he had a near-fatal car accident while filming the BBC‘S Top gear show in December 2022 at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome in Surrey.

Flintoff, without a helmet and no airbag to protect him, was driving a three-wheeled open-top Morgan Super 3, capable of speeds of up to 130mph, in icy conditions when he overturned and slid across the track, hitting his face along the track dragging. asphalt.

He spent four hours on the operating table and his horrific facial injuries were still visible when he… returned to the England cricket team last week when he became a member Josh Butler‘s side as an advisor for their ODI series against New Zealand

His return to the sport comes 14 years after he retired from The Oval, shortly after winning the Ashes for a second time.

A superb all-rounder who combined destructive batting with ferocious bursts of fast bowling – look no further than his legendary spells against Ricky Ponting and Jacques Kallis – because cricketer Flintoff had it all.

He is perhaps the biggest star of England’s 2005 Ashes triumph was famously pictured with blue eyes next to Kevin Pietersen when the England team attended a reception Downing Street after beating Australia and regaining the urn for the first time in 19 years.

Flintoff was never shy about his drinking and in his autobiography Ashes To Ashes he described how he once arrived to practice ‘smelling of booze’ and how he drank 10 pints of Guinness during a cricket tour at the age of 17.

And drinking cost him the England vice-captaincy in 2007, when he was removed from his position by then coach Duncan Fletcher over the infamous St Lucia pedal boat incident.

England’s World Cup campaign in the West Indies got off to an inauspicious start as Flintoff, who had just captained the Test squad after a humiliating 5-0 defeat in Australia, was out for a golden duck in the defeat to New Zealand.

The Lancastrian decided to head out for a comforting drink and boarded a pedalo during the night in an attempt to find the boat on which he thought Sir Ian Botham was having a nightcap.

Botham was in the West Indies to cover the tournament as a TV pundit, but the meeting with Flintoff never took place as the latter had to be rescued after the pedal boat capsized and faced the wrath of Fletcher the next morning.

“It was a real low point,” the father-of-four recalled on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories on ITV in 2014.

‘I had a press conference and was walking through the hotel reception – and the England fans were shaking their heads.

“I couldn’t make eye contact with them and I thought, ‘This isn’t good.'”

Speaking on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs in 2015, Flintoff, who has now been a teetotaler for almost a decade, cited the incident as the moment he realized drinking had become a problem.

The 45-year-old has also been open about dealing with depression and how closely his mental struggles were intertwined with his drinking.

“It’s not so much about the drinking, but about the reasons why you drink,” he explained in the radio program.

‘If you drink because you want to escape from something, I think you have to look at everything.

‘One of the reasons I probably stopped drinking is because I’m prone to depression. Drinking doesn’t help at all. I’m not touching it now.’

Speak with The sun in 2021, he added, “I was drinking to try to change the way I felt, and then it became a problem.

‘If I were to continue, I would start drinking, and not just for one session. It would take weeks and that couldn’t continue.’

Flintoff has always worn his heart on his sleeve and was usually direct when he was the subject of the BBC documentary Living with Bulimia three years ago.

He candidly admitted that he had been struggling with the eating disorder and revealed that they had started after being shamed by the press for his actions when his international career was still in its infancy.

The struggle continued throughout his career and well into his retirement, with Flintoff admitting to making himself sick after eating, even in the twelve months leading up to filming the documentary.

Flintoff first revealed he was suffering from bulimia in 2014, but did not seek medical advice until the BBC documentary was broadcast six years later.

“I don’t want to be a statistic,” he said, revealing that he was moved to speak out to raise awareness about why eating disorders remain a stigma for men.

‘I don’t want people to read about me in the coming years that something happened to me.’

By then he was already an established TV star.

After retiring from cricket after winning the Ashes in 2009, he had reinvented himself within a year on the hugely popular Sky program A League of their Own alongside Jamie Redknapp and James Corden.

Three seasons of Flintoff: Lord of the Fries on Sky One with Rob Penn followed, along with appearances on podcasts and reality shows, before he became the new presenter of Top Gear in 2018 alongside Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris.

But as Mail Sport reported on Thursday, Flintoff was seriously affected emotionally and physically by the crash, leaving his TV career in doubt and the future of Top Gear uncertain.

So could Flintoff return to cricket permanently?

“There’s no reason why this can’t be the start of something,” England cricket director Rob Key, who orchestrated Flintoff’s return, told Mail Sport.

“There’s nothing better than being back in the team and thinking you’re having an impact. Even without the accident, I think he would have been back at some point.

‘But step by step. (…) We take it as it comes, but it has been good for him to think about something other than the crash.’