Who was the shortest man to play for England? asks Michael Cheyney The exact height of some of the early players isn't recorded, but I think it's safe to assume that the shortest man to play for England was AP Freeman of Kent, who was only 5ft 2ins tall. He was a prolific legspinner at county level – he took 304 wickets in 1928, and followed that with mind-boggling tallies of 267 (1929), 275 (1930), 276 (1931), 253 (1932) 298 (1933, 205 (1934) and 212 (1935). He finished with 3776 first-class wickets (second only to Wilfred Rhodes's 4187) at 18.42, and retired to a house called "Dunbolin". Freeman was less successful at Test level, though, playing only 12 matches in which he took 66 wickets at 25.86 – better batsmen found his looped-up legspin fairly easy to counter. With stunning originality, little Alfred Percy Freeman was nicknamed "Tich".

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