The Hall of Famous Jewish Cricketers may be a very small room but at least we thought we could claim one of the all-time greats, Fred Trueman. The England fast bowler, who died in 2006, revealed a few years before that his mother Ethel had been the adopted daughter of a Jewish family in Leeds.

But Chris Waters, author of the new Authorised Biography of Trueman, has cast doubts on Fiery Fred's Maccabiah credentials.

Having put a genealogist on the trail, Waters told me: "It was clear that Trueman's roots are in Lincolnshire and there was no hint of any Jewish blood whatsoever."