STARTING OVER

The former England star ponders his post-car-crash life as he tours India with a group of teenage cricketers in 'Freddie Flintoff's Field of Dreams On Tour'

- Nick Hilton

“We’re representing England,” Andrew Flintoff tells an assembled group of teenage cricketers, picking at exotic curries under a dusky Indian sky. “But we’re also representing something far bigger: Preston.” And so it proves in Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams On Tour, a BBC One follow-up to the 2022 series that chronicled the formation of a grassroots cricket club in the Lancashire town. This sequel follows the tried and tested route of breaking out of its parochial roots and taking its cast on the road.

Flintoff, better known as Freddie or Fred, is a former cricketer turned TV presenter, well known to British audiences from stints on shows like A League of Their Own and Top Gear. It was on the latter where, in December 2022, he sustained lifechanging injuries, following a crash at Dunsfold Park Aerodrome. Rehabilitation ended his stint on the show (and possibly the show itself) and set back the planned sequel to Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams by many months. “I genuinely should not be here, with what happened,” an emotional Freddie croaks. “I’ve got another chance; I’ve got to go at it.” And that second chance takes Freddie, and his ragtag bunch of cricketers, to the streets of Kolkata and a shock immersion into Indian culture.