Five foot two, 1,976 overs, 304 wickets: Tich Freeman's 1928

On September 15, 1928, the last match of the English cricket season began at The Oval in south London. The county champions, Lancashire, were playing a Rest of England side drawn from the other counties. Bowling for the Rest was Kent's leg-spinner Alfred "Tich" Freeman, a county professional of 40 who stood five feet two inches tall. He was about to become the first man in the history of the game to take 300 wickets in a season. 12

Lancashire batted first, and Freeman had Dick Tyldesley — a leg-spinner himself — stumped for 13. That wicket was Freeman's three hundredth of the summer; in bowling figures, one wicket is one batsman dismissed. Four more followed in Lancashire's second innings, which took him to 304 for the season, and the Rest of England won by an innings. 345

Ninety-eight years later, 304 is still the only 300-wicket season in the record book of first-class cricket — the multi-day game played by counties and Test teams. That number is easier to feel in overs. 26

Kent's own account of the season puts Freeman's workload at 1,976 overs. An over is six deliveries, so that summer he sent down close to 12,000 balls, and the figure is almost 400 overs more than any other bowler in England managed. 3

He bowled in 65 innings that season and finished only one of them without a wicket. Thirteen times he took ten or more wickets in a single match. 3

Against Lancashire at Maidstone, Freeman bowled 51 of the 132 overs delivered in Lancashire's first innings, 39 of them consecutively. At the Folkestone festival, against MCC, he sent down 64.2 overs across two innings for 264 runs, close to a quarter of everything Kent bowled in that match. Against Surrey at Blackheath he bowled 48 overs for one wicket and 104 runs, and Kent rested him from the following day's match at Edgbaston so that he could recover before a Test. 3

Freeman was stocky, with thick fingers and a short, economical run-up. He bowled leg-breaks that pitched on middle and leg, so batsmen had to play at every ball, and he hated being taken off. Kent had little choice about working him: Colin Blythe, the county's other great slow bowler, had been killed in the First World War, which left Freeman leading the attack on his own. 29

Freeman's 304 beat the previous record by 14 wickets. Tom Richardson, a fast bowler for Surrey, had taken 290 in 1895, and that mark had stood for 33 years. 3

The list of the biggest wicket hauls in a first-class season, which requires at least 275 wickets to enter, carries Freeman's name on four of its six lines. 6

The same pattern holds across the rest of the record book. Freeman is the only bowler to have taken all ten wickets in an innings three times, in 1929, 1930 and 1931. He took five wickets in an innings 386 times and ten in a match 140 times, both records by a wide margin. His 3,776 first-class wickets in 592 matches place him second on the career list behind Wilfred Rhodes, and Freeman compiled his total in little more than half as many matches. 26

He also passed 250 wickets in England in every season from 1928 to 1933, a run of six that no other bowler has managed even once since 1901. Fewer first-class matches are played today, which is why the record list itself describes these marks as unlikely ever to be beaten. 26

England picked Freeman for twelve Test matches between 1924 and 1929 — internationals that can run five days — and he took 66 wickets in them at 25.86. The tour that made a spinner's reputation, Australia in 1924-25, cost him eight wickets in two Tests and 519 runs. Wisden's obituary put it plainly: "Tich seldom reached in Test cricket the phenomenal success he attained in the county sphere." 8

He did top England's bowling averages in 1928, with 22 wickets at 13.72 against the touring West Indies. Against the 1930 Australians he took 5 for 78. The Ashes, England's home Test series against Australia, went to other spinners. 28

His Test career ended in August 1929. Kent kept working him as hard as ever: between 1930 and 1933 Freeman took 951 County Championship wickets for Kent, more than half of everything the county claimed in those four seasons. 28

Kent released him at the end of 1936, when he was 48. He finished on 3,776 first-class wickets. The ball he used to dismiss Dick Tyldesley, his three hundredth wicket of 1928, sits in Kent's collection of artefacts, and the 304 remains the only 300-wicket season on the record. 38