WELL, glory be, the England cricket selectors have taken the dangerous option after all. Instead of going for the best chance of avoiding humiliation, they have taken the best chance of winning. Of retaining the Ashes. Andrew Flintoff is England captain.
It comes down to one simple point. Andrew Strauss is a top-class cricketer who has impressed as captain against Pakistan. Flintoff is special. And if England are to beat Australia this winter, each player will need to find the specialness within himself. Under Flintoff, that might just happen.
You may recall the Ashes series of last summer as a time out of the common run, as a few weeks touched by a sense of unreality, a period marked for ever by a sprinkling of magic. Well, that’s exactly how it was and the magic came from Flintoff. Best batsman, best bowler, heart and soul — and balls — of the team.
He is the one cricketer Australians fear. The one Englishman they wish was an Aussie. On the grounds that when in doubt, you do exactly what your opponents want least, Flintoff’s appointment as captain makes the most obvious sense.
Some people argue that Flintoff has so much on his plate already that adding to his load would be counterproductive. I can only assume that such people weren’t in India this spring. I was and I saw the way Flintoff created the extraordinary series-levelling victory in Bombay.
Advertisement
This took a special talent, one that few athletes have. It is the ability to change reality by sheer force of will. Ian Botham could do it as a performer, but in India, Flintoff also did it as captain. And that is something that even Steve Waugh, the great Australia captain, failed to do with one of the greatest Test teams ever assembled. It follows, then, that Flintoff has something that Waugh doesn’t.
CMJ was right to compare Flintoff to Martin Johnson, England’s World Cup-winning rugby union captain. Both frighten the opposition. Both are men others like to follow. The first gift necessary for a great leader is to inspire in the rest the gift of followship. In India, Flintoff showed that he has the same never-a-backward-step talents of Johnson.
I saw Johnson lead the England rugby team to victory in Australia. If the England cricket team are to do the same, it is essential that they have Flintoff as leader. Of course, it could all go wrong. Flintoff’s injuries could flare up again, he could overreach himself, he may have lost his fine edge in his long layoff.
But Flintoff is the aggressor’s choice, the one that says that England intend to seize the day, rather than to keep it tight and hope that the other lot have an off day. Flintoff’s selection as captain tells Australia that they will be facing the same old Poms: the ones who beat you last time.
It goes against tradition. English cricket usually gives the captain’s job to the batsman with the best education, which made the competition a laydown for Strauss. And Strauss is, without question, very good. But he hasn’t got that something extra.
Advertisement
England are not going to retain the Ashes without something extra. Captaincy is not all about decision-making, field placing, switching your bowlers, adjusting the plan. It is also about getting the other ten players all playing at their best and about finding from nowhere the bowler (or the ball) that breaks the partnership and changes the momentum of the session, the match, the series.
After last summer’s Ashes win, my view was that Flintoff must never go near the England captaincy. Keep him from worry, keep him from those poisonous press conferences, stroke him and make much of him and treat him for what he is: a living national treasure. Let him concentrate on being heart and soul and balls; he doesn’t have to be the head as well.
I underestimated him. I put Flintoff in the highest class as an athlete, but I still underestimated him. He is better than a great performer. Like Martin Johnson, like Bobby Moore, he is capable of bringing out great performances.
It might be the breaking of Flintoff. We must accept that. It might, indeed, be too much for him. But even if so, this is the right thing to do. Men such as Flintoff are for taking to the biggest possible testing ground and saying “win it”.
As C. S. Lewis says in The Chronicles of Narnia: “If you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.”
Advertisement
Now let’s see Flintoff take it on.