I'm Freddie Flintoff and I struggle with anxiety, nightmares and flashbacks

In early 2023, former international cricketer Freddie Flintoff had planned to take a ragtag bunch of very amateur cricket players from his hometown Preston on a once-in-a-lifetime cricket tour of India, writes PA’s Entertainment Features Writer, Rachael Davis.

It was set to be an incredible trip, celebrating India’s most popular sport and delving into the culture and communities of a country that couldn’t feel further from Lancashire, and was to be the basis for the second series of his hit BBC show Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams.

But in December 2022, just 12 weeks before Flintoff, now 46, was due to fly halfway across the world with the boys, he was involved in a serious accident while filming Top Gear.

“Something happened which changed my life forever,” he says in the belated Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams: On Tour, which is due to air on BBC One this month.

Flintoff, who was presenting the motoring show alongside Paddy McGuinness and Chris Harris, was severely injured in the accident at the Dunsfold Park Aerodrome in Surrey, putting all his hopes of taking his cricket lads to India on hold.

The boys, who were all new to the sport and came from challenging backgrounds, had been working with Flintoff to improve their cricket skills and develop a passion for the sport. Among the team are Adnan, an asylum seeker from Afghanistan, and Josh, who has autism, and it’s clear when we catch up with the boys in this second series just how much Flintoff’s attention and influence had done for them.

Yet, as keen as Flintoff was to take his team to India, it simply wasn’t possible. In episode one of Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams: On Tour, we see the moment it’s confirmed to the lads that the headlines they’ve seen are true – Flintoff is very unwell – and the heartbreak on their faces is searingly apparent.

In a self-filmed clip Flintoff, who is lying in bed on a white towel, his face stitched from the top of his nose to his chin with a dressing placed under his nostril, says he is seeing surviving the accident as “a second go”.

“(I) genuinely should not be here with what happened,” he says.

“It’s gonna be a long road back. I’ve only just started.”

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The documentary then picks up with Flintoff seven months after the accident, as he is still recovering at home.

“It’s been a lot harder than I thought”, he reveals, before expressing how keen he is to still take the team to India, despite the fact he’s barely leaving his house – and only ever with a face mask and glasses on as his face heals.

“I struggle with anxiety. I have nightmares, I have flashbacks,” he says, with candid honesty.

“It’s been so hard to cope with.”

But then, six months later in January 2024, he’s back to see the boys, excited to tell them that they won’t be waiting much longer for their trip across the world – and they are so thrilled to see him.

When one of the lads asks if he’s feeling completely better, back to 100%, he says: “I don’t know if I will again, to be honest”.

“This is something I’ll probably have to deal with for the rest of my life,” he adds.

“Better? No, different.”

“One thing I’ve been very aware of, and desperately wanted to do, is take you (to India),” he tells the team.

And off they go.

It’s a stark change of environment for the lads used to their Preston home comforts, of course, but Flintoff also acknowledges his vulnerability upon arrival to Kolkata, saying he was struggling from being away from home – especially all the way over in India – after being housebound for months on end.

However, everyone gets stuck in, trying local curries, shopping (and haggling) in food markets, and playing gully cricket in the city’s streets, enjoying the sport in one of the most revered cricketing nations in the world.

“I lived with them for two and a half weeks, you know, we ate together every day, we did everything together. It was incredible,” says Flintoff, speaking at a launch event for the series.

“I think the overriding theme of the trip,” he adds, “was that we, everybody on the trip, realised (that) actually, in our lives, we get so many opportunities. And it’s all about taking them.

“I think the penny dropped with the lads as the tour goes on. Because some of the kids that we met, and some of the places we went to India, these kids only get one opportunity and they grab it with both hands…

“We thought: we’re not going to let any more pass us by.”

Flintoff has realised that he was absolutely right to deliver on his promise to take the team to India, even after a terrible accident postponed the trip for so long.

“It’s been incredible over the past, what, three years now, I’ve seen them grow… there was a massive difference in how they are as people,” he says.

“And the thing which was most pleasing was whatever environment we put them in, or wherever we went, they just gave such a good account of themselves and where they’re from.

“You step back every now and then and you watch them, the way they’re going about things – you got this group of lads from Preston, one from Blackpool, and one from Afghanistan, and these kids in India – it was just such a lesson for anybody watching, how good these boys are, how much respect they have for the culture, the differences, maybe not some of the food! But it really was, it was an eye opener I think as the series goes on you’ll see.”

“On the way back,” he adds, “it was a different group of lads, a group of young men now, ready to tackle the world…

“They all came back with ambition, and having an idea of what they want to do with their life, where(as) I think beforehand, before we left, not too many did.”

Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams: On Tour starts on Tuesday, August 13 at 9pm on BBC One and iPlayer.