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We’ve been weighing up whether to address today’s ‘big story’ or not all day. The latest extract from Duncan Fletcher’s upcoming autobiography reveals how Andrew Flintoff turned up for a practice session during the 2007 Ashes series a little the worse for wear. He was captain at the time.
Apparently it was a still-drunk-from-the-night-before situation. Flintoff couldn’t throw properly and Fletcher thought he was going to injure him when he gave him catching practice. The practice session was abandoned and Fletcher was a little annoyed.
It all makes what seemed like a bit of an overreaction in the wake of Flintoff’s World Cup drinking accident with a pedalo seem a little bit more understandable.
We never commented on the pedalo thing for the same reasons that we weren’t going to comment on this. It’s being done to death in every newspaper and who cares what we think anyway? However, there’s one thing that really bugs us, hence this textual dirge of an update.
Why the hell does Andrew Flintoff have to keep embracing his cartoonish, heavy-drinking image? The man’s turning into a caricature. The man’s turning into Ian Botham.
We don’t care if he drinks. We care if he’s known for drinking though. We’d much rather he was known for cricket.
Of course he likes a drink, he is from Preston after all. If he didn’t like a drink, he’d probably be shunned as a homosexual. If someone had explained this to Duncan Fletcher, preferably using the phrase “fookin’ ponce”, I’m sure he’d have understood the situation.
Is that how you do rehab in england, by giving them the captains gig.
Good work, worked with Ponting.