Former England cricketer Freddie Flintoff has revealed that he “genuinely should not be here” after a crash during filming an episode of Top Gear.
Flintoff’s accident happened in December 2022 – and in Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams on Tour, which is due to air later this month, he opens up about it for the first time.
“I don’t want to sit and feel sorry for myself,” he says in the show. “I don’t want sympathy. I’m struggling with my anxiety, I have nightmares, I have flashbacks – it’s been so hard to cope.”
“But I’m thinking if I don’t do something, I’ll never go. I’ve got to get on with it.”
The show follows Flintoff as he heads to India with the Lancashire Cricket Academy, who are on tour – a place, as he says, where “cricket is 10 times bigger than football”.
However, it could have been so different. A few weeks before he was due to depart, the open-topped car Flintoff was driving for an upcoming episode of Top Gear flipped over with him inside.
The show was put on hold while Flintoff attempted to recover, and was eventually taken off air for the “foreseeable future”; Flintoff later settled with the BBC out of court for a reported £9 million.
The show also shows footage from the cricketing hero around the time of the accident, including some shot by Flintoff in hospital shortly afterwards, which shows him lying in bed with injuries to his face.
“I need help, and I realise I’m not the best at asking for it. I need to stop crying every two minutes,” he says.
“I’ve got to look at the positives, haven’t I? I’m still here, I’ve got another chance, I’ve got to go at it. I’m seeing that as how it is, a second go.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing the lads again and being around them, I really am.”
However, the trauma of the accident are still clear: at one point, Flintoff tells the boy’s he’s travelling with that he may need to “take myself off” to “go cry in my room.”
And in a section shot seven months after the accident, it’s revealed that apart from a number of operations, Flintoff was barely leaving the house, and wearing a full mask and glasses to go out.
When one of the boys later asks if he’s feeling better, he replies, “not really. I don't know if I will again to be honest. I am better than I was.
“It's something I will probably have to deal with for the rest of my life.”
