Monday, July 06, 2009

Flintoff a Chess Player

From The Guardian paper, this little tidbit about former English cricket star Freddie Flintoff:

Born in Preston 31 years ago, Flintoff grew up in a cricket-mad family: his father played on Saturday afternoons, his brother Chris joined him, and his mother made the teas. "So from an early age I was being pushed around the boundary, playing at the side," he recalls. But he never rebelled against it, save for a brief flirtation with chess. "I played for Lancashire, which is bizarre really. I had a teacher at primary school, and it was almost like something out of a film where you had this school on an estate and you had these kids coming to play chess on their lunchtime." Flintoff's brother even played chess for England. "I was more of a maverick player, no real forward planning, just moved the pieces," he smiles. "I've not played for years ... I think the last time I played was against Mike Atherton."

Read more in The G2 Interview.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It seems like everybody was a chess player like everybody is poker player these days. For those who havent noticed Alexander Grischuk is one of the leaders in the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas which is being played as we speak. I wish Alex good luck. How great it would be for a top class chess player to be the World Champion of Poker:-)

Regards,
Nicholas Kordahi

Anonymous said...

Actually it's very sad indeed when chess players require "validation" though playing poker.

:)