It was never really about cricket. In July 2022, Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams saw the England cricketer turned TV presenter create a new youth team out of nowhere in Preston, Lancashire, persuading a group of listless teens to leave their bedrooms and pick up bats and balls. The artifices of reality TV couldn’t conceal that the lads were not all that good at or interested in the game itself, but that didn’t matter: what made the series so moving was the effect the project, and Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff, had on their self-esteem. Being part of a team, with something to aim for and someone believing in them, looked life-changing.
A follow-up series, Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams on Tour, was announced. More than a year late, here it is, and to begin with it is the programme as planned. In scenes filmed towards the end of 2022, Flintoff reconvenes the team and says he wants to take them to play in India: before that, a training camp at Loughborough University has the familiar Field of Dreams dynamic. None of the boys get out of bed in time for a 7.30am breakfast meeting but, after a firm but caring telling-off from Flintoff, they enjoy a fruitful training session. The camera lingers on Flintoff as he basks in the upbeat mood: “This weekend, I’ve loved it.”
There is dreadful foreboding in watching a capable, forceful man who does not know what we know. As preparations for the India tour continue, Flintoff sustains terrible facial injuries in a car crash while filming for Top Gear. You might have half-forgotten about Flintoff’s accident: he has only been seen in public a couple of times, hasn’t been interviewed and hasn’t posted online. But never mind Field of Dreams on Tour being the first media Flintoff has done – the trip to India won’t be far from the first time he has left the house. Filming resumes after seven months and several surgeries, for Flintoff to talk about the nightmares, flashbacks and anxiety he’s been suffering: “I thought I could just shake it off … but as much as I’ve wanted to go out and do things, I’ve just not been able to.” Then the programme skips on another six months to the point where Flintoff feels ready for his reunion with the squad.
Flintoff has previously fronted startling documentaries on his experiences with depression and bulimia, but those struggles had not prevented him excelling as a sportsman and a screen entertainer. This is different. If the scarring on such a famous face is a shock, it’s even more concerning to take in Flintoff’s muted demeanour and tentative posture when he sees the lads again: this new Freddie is stoppable, destructible, vincible. It’s customary with programmes like this to think, man, I hope these kids will be all right. We’re not used to having the same thought about the superstar coach.
What that means, however, is that Field of Dreams on Tour becomes an even more stirring hymn to the value of sport as an excuse to get out into the world, to get moving, to get together. Before, it was about cricket as a means of telling isolated young men with limited opportunities that there were still things they could do and people who could help them, with the magic of telly adding the fantastic bonus of them being mentored by one of England’s best players. Now, as the trip to India finally happens, the cricketing great is more like a team member who needs his mates to step up and help him.
Amid the overwhelming sounds, sights and smells of Kolkata, this they do. One works hard to acclimatise despite his autism making the new environment challenging. Two others take on the task of cooking for the group and, although their tour of the city’s markets comes to nothing and they end up serving supermarket nuggets and chips, Flintoff gratefully observes that they’ve successfully put food on the table.
So far, cricket hardly comes into it. In a country where lads play cricket every day in parks and playgrounds in the way young British people play football, the Preston novices would be marmalised by any organised local team. So Flintoff finds them a game of street cricket against a team of kids being looked after by a homelessness charity: tennis ball, underarm bowling, and if you hit a six into someone’s yard, you’re out. Despite a certain A Flintoff batting at number 11, the Britons lose, but the result is meaningless: Freddie and his boys have got back out there and played. In a show full of small victories, it’s a big win.
• Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams on Tour aired on BBC One and is available on BBC iPlayer.
