Freddie Flintoff
Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff is a presenter, broadcaster and cricketing legend.
Freddie made his first class debut for Lancashire in 1995, and international honours came when he made his Test Match debut in 1998 vs South Africa.Freddie made his biggest impact for England in the summer of 2005, when he played a major role in regaining the Ashes from Australia. His contributions won him the ±«Óãtv Sports Personality of the Year award in the same year. In 2006 Freddie was awarded an MBE, yet in September 2010, as one of the biggest players in the game, Flintoff retired from professional cricket due to a recurring knee injury.
Since his retirement, Freddie has developed a strong broadcast career. In March 2010, Flintoff became a Team Captain, along with Jamie Redknapp, on the Sky One sports panel show A League of Their Own. The Bafta-winning show has been a huge success and is now about to film its thirteenth series.
2012 also saw the ±«Óãtv One documentary The Hidden Side of Sport, which took an insightful look at depression in the world of sport. Freddie met with some high profile figures for the documentary including Piers Morgan, Vinnie Jones and Ricky Hatton. In the same year, Freddie embarked on one of his greatest challenges to date; training to become a professional heavyweight boxer. This was broadcast in a documentary for Sky One; Flintoff: From Lord’s To The Ring. The culmination of this was a victory on his debut fight at The MEN Arena, Manchester, where he defeated his American opponent.
After a chronic knee injury seemingly ended his cricket career in 2010, it was announced that Freddie would play for Lancashire again in the NatWest T20 blast squad in May 2014. Following on from his stint with Lancashire in 2014 Freddie continued his professional cricket comeback in the Australian T20 Big Bash league in December 2014 & January 2015. As well as playing in the tournament Freddie joined Channel TEN’s prestigious commentary team and made quite an impression with his on field commentary.
In March 2015 Freddie was crowned the King of the Jungle in the first series of the Australian version of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!, and later that year fronted a new six part series for ±«Óãtv Two, Special Forces: Ultimate Hell Week. Bowled over by the support of the Australian public, Freddie returned to Australia in November 2015 until early 2016 to reprise his role with Channel Ten on The Project twice weekly and to also join the commentary team on the Big Bash League.
In early 2016, Flintoff was elected the new PCA President of the Professional Cricketers’ Association at the PCA’s annual general meeting held in Birmingham. Freddie joined a very exclusive club as he succeeded his fellow Lancastrian David Lloyd in becoming the seventh President in the association’s history.
In September 2017, Flintoff was the main presenter for Cannonball on ITV with Frankie Bridge, Radzi Chinyanganya, Ryan Hand and Maya Jama as poolside reporters. In December of that year, Flintoff hosted a new ITV primetime show which aired on Christmas Eve All Star Musicals.
2017 also saw Freddie try his hand in the acting and musical worlds. Flintoff made his acting debut in one episode of the ±«Óãtv drama Kay Mellor’s Love, Lies & Records. He also made his stage debut in Kay Mellor’s musical Fat Friends, touring around the UK in 2018 playing the character Kevin alongside Jodie Prenger and Sam Bailey.
Since then, Freddie took up the role of host for Sky One’s Carnage. The high-octane show saw teams of creative engineers, mechanics and drivers from throughout the UK and Ireland transform regular cars into weaponised battle-ready vehicles. Moving back to the world of cricket, Freddie sang ‘on top of the world’ in this new video for the International Cricket Council (ICC) ahead of the cricket World Cup in 2019.
