Follow UsFormer England captain and one of the best fast-bowling all-rounders that the country has seen, Andrew Flintoff, went through a life-threatening car accident while being part of the TV show Top Gear. He managed to survive the accident, but his face was brutally disfigured, which meant that it took him almost three years to make a public appearance after the unfortunate incident.
Speaking on his documentary ‘Flintoff’, which premiered on April 25 (Friday) on Disney, the former cricketer said, “After the accident, I didn't think I had it in me to get through. This sounds awful, part of me wishes I'd been killed. Part of me thinks, I wish I'd died.
"I didn't want to kill myself. I wouldn't mistake the two things. I was not wishing, I was just thinking, 'this would have been so much easier',” Flintoff explained the difference.
The TV show Top Gear was eventually ‘rested’ by the BBC indefinitely and Flintoff was compensated, but the 47-year-old has still not come out of the horrors of the show and feels that both sport and TV treat people as commodities.
"I learned this in sport as well. All the injuries, all the injections, all the times I got sent out on a cricket field and treated like a piece of meat. That's TV and sport. It's quite similar, you're just a commodity,” said the man who finished with 3845 runs and 226 wickets in Test cricket.
So even after all this, what has kept Flintoff pushing hard to get up every day and go for it?
"I don't think I'm ever going to be better, just different now. I'm getting there slowly. Now I try to take the attitude that the sun will come up tomorrow and my kids will still give me a hug. I'm probably in a better place now,” answered the now coach of the England Lions and Northern Superchargers in The Hundred.