"I felt something hit me and, looking down, saw pellets on the ground," Flintoff wrote, referring to the one-dayer at the Ferozeshah Kotla ground in the Indian capital in January, 2002.
"You expect to have plastic bottles thrown at you when you are playing on the sub-continent, but you don’t expect to be shot."
Flintoff said the English team management played down the incident, but New Delhi cricket officials said they were not taking the all-rounder’s claim seriously.
"If such a thing actually happened, why did the England team keep quiet about it?
"No one told us a thing then or after the tour. He can’t be serious."
Flintoff claims he was himself rattled by the team management’s decision to play down the incident.
"Nasser Hussain (the captain) got very heated about it in the middle and Phil Neale, the tour manager, came to find out what was going on, but the whole thing seemed to get swept under the carpet," Flintoff wrote.
"There was a big story back home to do with crowd disturbances, but Andrew Walpole, the England Cricket Board’s media relations manager, told me to play the incident down when I was interviewed the following day.
"Looking back now, I think I should have made more of a stand because I wasn’t there to be shot at.
