Doug Freeman


Douglas Linford Freeman was a New Zealand cricketer who played in two Tests in 1933. He was born in Randwick, New South Wales in Australia and died in Sydney in Australia.

Cricket career

Freeman attended Nelson College from 1931 to 1933. In a match for the College team in the Nelson club competition in 1931-32 he took 18 wickets: 8 for 64 and 10 for 132.
A leg-spinner, Freeman made his first-class debut in January 1933, only two months before his Test debut, taking 4 for 85 and 5 for 102 for Wellington against Auckland. In his second first-class match, for Wellington against the MCC, he took 3 for 71, his victims Eddie Paynter, Wally Hammond and Les Ames. He also played his first two Hawke Cup matches for Nelson in January and February 1933, taking 13 wickets for 133.
He was selected to play Test cricket while still a school student, making his debut in March 1933 at the age of 18 years and 197 days. He was New Zealand's youngest Test cricketer until Daniel Vettori made his debut in 1997. Freeman took only one wicket in the two Tests of the series, in which Hammond made 227 and 336 not out. He played one match for Wellington in the 1933–34 season, taking one wicket, and that was the end of his first-class career, at the age of 19.

Later life

He moved to Fiji in 1935, where he worked for the Colonial Sugar Refining company. He managed the Fiji cricket team's tour of New Zealand in 1953-54 and played in some of the minor matches, but achieved little with bat or ball. He later worked for CSR in Australia.