Freddie Flintoff's wife Rachel was forced to break the news to the kids about how their beloved dad looked following his shock Top Gear crash. His injuries included a fractured jaw, broken and missing teeth and bleeding wounds to his face, leaving Rachel distraught and close to tears.

She recalled warning their children on a phone call: "You've just got to be as strong as you've ever been. Your dad does look different at the moment. It's gonna get better, but I don't want you to look shocked and horrified, because that's gonna knock him.'" She'd rushed to the hospital as soon as news of Freddie's 2022 accident at Dunsfold test track reached her, and tried her utmost to be calm.

A visibly emotional Rachel revealed: "When I did see him, I walked in the room, and he was just in the bed, and he was bandaged up. I've never seen someone so scared in their eyes.

"He just stared at me, and I just think he was looking at me to know how bad he was," she revealed.

"I totally pulled myself together, and I didn't cry. I just said, 'It's fine. You're gonna be okay. I can't believe how amazing you look.'"

Despite the impact of the crash, she recalled she felt relieved and grateful, explaining: "I was so grateful to all those people, I still had a husband, the kids still had their dad."

Rachel gave her deeply personal account for the first time ever on his upcoming documentary for Disney+, simply titled Flintoff.

The documentary also includes testimonies from a medical professional who attended to Freddie, revealing that he'd had "a mixture of hard tissue and soft tissue injuries, broken teeth, lost teeth and elements of the upper jaw bone that were also fractured and displaced".

Freddie had been rushed into surgery for five hours to reconstruct his face after the crash.

However, his return to cricket coaching has transformed him, according to both Rachel and Freddie himself.

Rachel clarified in the documentary: "It's like back where he belongs. For a girl who knew nothing about cricket, or very little about cricket, it's definitely become a big part of my life, and when [Freddie] needed it most, cricket was there for him."

She added with conviction: "I mean, it sounds a bit weird saying a bit over the top to say, but I do think cricket saved him. It gave him a reason for being again."