Freddie

Gundel and I started a new book last week, a children's book whose film adaptation had been mentioned in another book I had just finished (the titles are not important in this context).

Maybe you remember my post about the rose in a book I read on The Internet Archive.
I still enjoy looking at library stamps or notes in books I read there, but this time I found something that's a puzzle to me.

Well, Freddie, congratulations from me as well!
Once again, I have questions, though.
I guess this note has been glued into the book because otherwise it might have fallen out during the scan unless someone positioned it like that on purpose. So my second guess is that the book was a gift on occasion of Freddie's successful year.

This is a printed note in which you can fill in the name. Is this something children - as it's a children's or middle grade book - are regularly congratulated on and if so, for how long has this been going on? That particular edition of the book is from 2010. Had I not known that, however, the font with the swirls would have reminded me of the 1970s, but of course you can find all kinds of retro fonts today and I doubt someone had a stacks of 70s notes around 🙃

Now to the really important point, and by important I mean for my weird brain at about 10 p.m. on an ordinary day.
What was Freddie successful at? What exactly are "the Threes" and how can you spend a year in them?
A quick online search might be doing the trick. The first page I came across was a cricket blog called "In the Threes". Huh.
"Why "in the threes"? Well, it's where I've spent most of my amateur cricket career."
That was about all I understood on that blog. The words looked English, but actually it was "Cricketish". But hey, so it probably had to do with cricket, that was a start. The book was British, I assumed Freddie is as well (I hope his ears are not ringing too much), so it made sense.
Freddie had a successful cricket year ... although this might have not been more than one of those participation prizes. Hey Freddie, you made it through the whole year, well done you, old chap. Good man.

I still didn't know what exactly "the Threes" are, though. Probably the third team in some way. Maybe a youth team?
As I have no life but can get obsessed about totally random stuff like that - you may have noticed before - I started going through cricket pages and understood less and less.
Then, however, I noticed the term "the 1st XI" (a cricket team has eleven players and I have no idea why the number is Roman) and so on ... could the 3rd XI be "the Threes"? It sure sounded plausible, especially after reading about "first XI players who say 'they won't play for the twos'".

What I still don't get is if a club only has the first to the fourth XI, if it depends merely on skill, and if there are separate "threes" etc. for grown-ups and children.
Maybe a British reader or someone from another Cricket playing nation wants to chime in on that and enlighten me?

Until then my weird brain will just imagine Freddie to look like this 😉

Francis Cotes: The Young
Cricketer (1768),
public domain via Wikimedia
Commons