Freddie Flintoff has been “saved by cricket” and is “back where he belongs” after struggling to recover mentally from his Top Gear car crash which saw him scarred for life. The legendary England cricketer, 47, didn’t leave the house for more than six months after the accident aside from getting treatment and struggled with anxiety and sleeping issues.
A new Disney+ documentary shows him saying he thought he had died in the aftermath of his car flipping over and those moments replay in his head when he goes to bed at night.
Reflecting on what happened, Freddie tells the cameras: “After the accident, I didn’t think I had it in me to get through. This sounds awful. Part of me thinks I should have been killed. Part of me thinks I wish I had died. I didn’t want to kill myself, I won’t mistake the two things, but I just, I was not wishing I was thinking this would have been so much easier.
Now, I try to take the attitude, you know, what the sun will come up with tomorrow, and then my kids will still give me a hug, and I’m probably in a better place now.”
He is now the head coach of England Lions, the second string of the national men’s team. And his wife Rachel is in no doubt it is getting back into cricket which has put a smile back on his face and helped him get out the house and closer to being back to his normal self.
Rachel says: “It’s like back where he belongs, for a girl who knew nothing about cricket, or very little about cricket, it’s definitely become a big part of my life, and when Andrew needed it most, cricket was there for him. I mean, it sounds a bit weird saying a bit over the top to say, but I do think cricket saved him. It gave him a reason for being again.”
Freddie relives his Top Gear crash hell in his new documentary and details exactly what happened. Looking back at the crash at Dunsfold Park in Surrey, Freddie says: “I remember everything about it. In some ways, it’d be easier if I’d gone unconscious and then been unconscious for a week or two and then you wake up and your stitches are out and everything. But I remember everything.
“I think about it now, back in the car, it were a three wheeler, a reinforcement windscreen and a bar covering half me back. So I’m exposed. We’re probably doing about 40 or 45, they were showing me how to get the car going sideways, and the wheel came up at the front.
“It’s a funny thing rolling a car because there’s a point of no return, and everything slows down. It’s so weird. I used to play cricket. Used to bat. You get point four of a second to make your mind up where the ball was going. What shot you gonna play? Are you gonna move your feet?
“And as it[car] started going over, I looked at the ground. I knew if I get hit here on the side[of his head] I break my neck, on the temple I’m dead. My best chance is face down. I remember hitting and my head got hit and I got dragged out, and the car went over, and I went over the back of the car, and then pulled face down on the runway for about 50 metres underneath the car and then it hit the grass and flipped back in.
“I thought I was dead because I was conscious. I couldn’t see anything. I was thinking is that? Is that it for the rest of my days. My hat came over my eyes, so I pulled it off and thought, no I am not, this is not heaven. And then I looked down and blood was coming down. And my biggest fear was I didn’t think I had a face. I thought my face had come off. I was frightened to death.”
Freddie says the accident has left huge mental wounds as well as physical. He tells the Disney+ documentary: “I still live it every day, see the car every night when I go to bed, and it’s so vivid. Not slept the same since.
“It’s a movie in my head and I have watched it as well. In car footage. I’ve seen it. I demanded it. I wanted validation for myself. This is why I am feeling that, this is why I am so bad.”
The film does also highlight Freddie’s incredible cricket achievements including the 2005 Ashes victory with England. And he seems more positive about the future after taking up cricket coaching and getting a new set of teeth fitted. He is now the head coach of England Lions, the second string of the national men’s team.
“I’ve got these teeth. This is it, this is what I am left with,” he says with a grin as he plays golf with friends.
* Flintoff Premieres on Disney+ on Friday(April 25).
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