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 | | Thursday, 24 May, 2001, 15:10 GMT 16:10 UK Clash of the Titans  In the wake of Fred Trueman's scathing attack on Darren Gough, BBC Sport Online's Thrasy Petropoulos puts the two England fast bowlers head to head. Strike bowler To most observers - certainly to Trueman himself - it will seem like sacrilege to rate Gough as the equal of a man who put the fear of God into batsmen the world over. But if Gough continues to develop as he has done recently, he could improve on perhaps the most relevant statistic of Trueman's career - a strike-rate of a wicket every 49.4 balls. Though Gough's wickets have cost more than Trueman's in terms of runs conceded - 26.59 against 21.57 - he has struck every 50.2 balls. Over the past two years that figure has been 44.94 and last year it came down to a staggering 38.95. Thirty years of hurt Darren Gough might have improved with age, but he still has a long, long way to go to scale the heights that Trueman did by the end of his 30-year first-class career.
In fact, Gough will not come close - no modern bowler ever will - to Trueman's tally of wickets. In 11 years of playing for Yorkshire and England, Gough has reached 666 first-class wickets with 25 five-wicket hauls. Trueman captured 2,304 wickets, including a mind-boggling 125 "five-fors". No wonder he said if anyone ever passed his then-record 300 Test wickets they would be "bloody tired". Schoolboy fantasy Against most other bowlers, Gough's greatest moment would win hands down. After scoring a cavalier 51 in Sydney during the 1994-95 Ashes series, he came out and cut through the Aussies with 6-49. They had needed 110 to avoid the follow-on and only just passed it by six runs.
He took 3-89 as India were bowled out for 293 and England had gone on to secure a first-innings lead of 41. And then the drama struck. Within the space of 14 balls of their second innings, India lost their four wickets without a run on the board - three of them to Fiery Fred. England went on to win the Test by seven wickets, and they completed a 3-0 whitewash at Old Trafford where Trueman took 8-31 as India crumbled to 58 all out. Smiles from nowhere As a dour Yorkshireman, Trueman was not known for his smile - in fact quite the opposite - and his dry sense of humour has become positively arid with the passing years. His ungracious remarks about the current England team, particularly Gough and Caddick, paint him in a particularly poor light. How Gough will age is unknown, but ever since he came into the England side, against New Zealand in 1994, he has been a breath of fresh air - celebrating each of his wickets with ear-to-ear chirpiness. Foot-in-mouth disease
One Australian official might have regretted his benign question to Fred about what he thought of "our" magnificent Sydney Bridge. "What do I think of 'your bridge'?" Trueman spluttered indignantly. "Your bridge? Our bloody bridge you should say - bugger it - a Yorkshire firm - Dorman and Long - built it - and you bastards still ain't paid for it". Quite. Other little gems include: "You should treat women the same way a good Yorkshire batsman used to treat a cricket ball. Don't stroke 'em, don't tickle 'em, just give 'em a ruddy good belt" - (quoted by Frances Edmonds, 1994) "He couldn't bowl a hoop down hill" - on Ian Botham. Botham took 76 more Test wickets than Trueman. And: "There's only one head bigger than Greig's, and that's Birkenhead" - on Tony Greig.
When asked about his life as a single lad before his England debut, he said: "I was eating too much junk food. I was never a porker, but I was known as 'Guzzler'. I ate and drank too much." More recently, he revealed how during the England win against South Africa in Centurion two winters ago, he had drunk himself into a "disgraceful, self-induced state of disrepair." He went on: "I had already thrown up in the dressing room and I felt so bad I wasn't sure whether I had a hangover or was still drunk." Next time, Darren, please leave a bit to the imagination. | | Other top Funny Old Game stories:  Links to more Funny Old Game stories are at the foot of the page. | ||||||
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