Tony Greig captained England 14 times and managed three wins – all of them in India in a series victory. But we’ve already said too much, because there is only one rule when you talk about England all-rounders, and that is that you must always neglect to mention Tony Greig.

This leaves three famous England all-rounders who’ve captained England: Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff and Ben Stokes.

None of them was especially successful.

Who was the worst?

Ian Botham – 12 Tests (eight draws, four defeats)

Captain Beef served from June 1980 to July 1981, a rather brutal period comprising nine Tests against the West Indies and three against Australia.

Our man averaged 13.14 with the bat in those Tests with one fifty. He was top wicket-taker though with 35 at 33.08.

The story of Botham’s captaincy is really that his own performance became limper and limper with nothing from his team to offset that. Eventually, one way or another, his reign definitely had to end. (Officially, he resigned.)

“I didn’t quite understand why you had to butter-up someone and tell them they were the best thing since sliced bread to go out and play for your country,” he later said about his way of dealing with his players.

Maybe his problem was that he treated everyone like a sandwich.

Botham’s first match in charge was actually one of the better ones – which says something because it was a defeat. The West Indies made heavy weather of chasing 208 to win, getting there eight wickets down. Four rain-affected draws followed.

After another draw in a one-off Test against Australia, Botham took his team to the Windies and got absolutely belted in the first two Tests. The third one was a creditable draw, but the fourth involved Geoff Boycott batting for a draw in the second innings, so that was basically even worse than a defeat.

Then it was the Ashes. England lost the first Test and the second – a draw – was Beef’s final one as captain.

He made a three-ball duck in the first innings and a golden duck in the second. No-one clapped him when he walked off.

“It was a pretty good career move, resigning,” he later concluded.

Sure was.

Andrew Flintoff – 11 Tests (two wins, two draws, seven defeats)

Flintoff was captain from March 2006 to January 2007.

He managed two wins, two draws and seven defeats, with six losses on the bounce to finish – five of which were an Ashes series.

He averaged 33.23 as captain, with six fifties. He took 34 wickets at 34.44.

Flintoff received his somewhat unexpected promotion in India after both the captain, Michael Vaughan, and vice-captain, Marcus Trescothick, had to leave the tour. Vaughan was injured, while Trescothick had been spending his nights tormented by, “specific, enormous, terrifying images.”

Not insignificantly, Flintoff drew the series.

It’s worth picking out some of the decisive contributions.

England drew the first Test, in large part thanks to a hundred from Paul Collingwood. This is largely forgotten these days because it was Alastair Cook’s debut and he scored a hundred in the second innings.

They lost the second Test in the way that touring teams are supposed to lose Tests in India, by folding in the second innings.

Then, in India’s first innings of the third Test, James Anderson took 4-40 (bowling first change). He also managed a run-out.

England again massively collapsed, but this time they were sufficiently far ahead that a 50 from the captain was enough to leave the home team chasing 313 to win.

Thanks to a minor injury to Virender Sehwag and the impending close of play, India started their second innings with a top three of – get this – Wasim Jaffer, Irfan Pathan and Anil Kumble. At lunch on the final day, those guys were all gone and it was 75-3.

Reflecting on this point in the game on a Sky Sports vodcast a few months back, Flintoff said: “I came off and I took a shower to buy myself a bit of time because I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what to say.”

So this is what he did.

“In my wisdom, I came out with my towel on. And then Ring of Fire got put on the jukebox. And then I started dancing naked. I got my towel going. It’s swinging around. I’m singing Ring of Fire. And then everyone – like Stuart Broad and stuff – everyone’s singing Ring of Fire.”

At this point, while he was still fully naked, the bell went for everyone to go out for the afternoon session.

“So I was wet through. I got myself dressed. And I walked out and then the umpire threw me the ball and I thought, ‘You know what, I’m going to have a bowl here. I feel all right now.’ And then we won that Test.”

That is a great way of reporting on a match – “And then we won that Test” – but a few details: England took seven wickets in 15 overs. Shaun Udal took 4-14, Flintoff took 3-14 and, most incredibly of all, Monty Panesar caught a Dhoni skyer two balls after dropping a Dhoni skyer.

The skyer was the best bit. Despite having more than enough time to get to the first chance, Panesar somehow contrived to miss it by 10 feet. It was very incredible. The tension when the second one went up moments later was really quite something.

And then when he caught it? Oh! Liquid cricket.

After that series, Flintoff’s England took on Sri Lanka at home and actually, with hindsight, this was the beginning of the end of Flintoff the cricketer, so this is actually quite an interesting moment to look back on.

In the first Test, he bowled 68 overs – 51 of them in the second innings.

Bring up a list of bowlers who’ve done that and it’s just wall-to-wall spinners. Very few pace bowlers have bowled that much in a match and not many of those have been 6ft4in and built like a brick shithouse.

Mystifyingly, Flintoff suffered a recurrence of his ankle injury in that series and missed the Pakistan series that followed. Then he and his team got battered in Australia.

“I did not know what to do,” was his verdict on how he handled that Ashes series. “I can only hold my hands up.”

The scale of the defeats are worth mentioning: 277 runs; six wickets; 206 runs; an innings and 99 runs; and 10 wickets.

Not entirely surprisingly, Flintoff was still a psychological mess for the World Cup that followed. He was also physically compromised for pretty much the whole of the rest of his career.

After the 68-over Test, he averaged 25 with the bat and 36 with the ball. He also scored at three an over from then on, having scored at four an over before that match, and he never made another hundred.

Ben Stokes – one Test (one defeat)

In the summer of 2020, in a ground without fans, Ben Stokes’ England played the West Indies and lost.

In a bold move for a temporary captain, he dropped England’s second-highest wicket-taker, Stuart Broad.

His personal performance was decent. He made 43 and 46 and took six wickets.

Verdict

It seems unlikely given how it’s remembered, but Andrew Flintoff has the best captaincy record of the three. Not only does he have actual wins to his name, but one of them came in India in a drawn series. Pretty good. Pretty, pretty good.

He is however the worst captain.

That match against Sri Lanka when he drove the entire weight of a slightly-out-of-shape Andrew Flintoff through his knee over 400 times was effectively the death of Andrew Flintoff the top level all-rounder and that is a very sizeable thing indeed to have in your debit column.

With one Test and one defeat to his name, we’d have Ben Stokes down as the best captain.

Stokes batted okay and bowled well in that match and he also managed to drop Stuart Broad without falling out with him, which is pretty incredible. That decision didn’t do much for him in the match where he was at the reins, but it did mean that he bequeathed Joe Root with a Superbroad for the next two matches, both of which England won.

As for Botham, immediately after giving up the captaincy – immediately after, like the very next Test match – he took six wickets, then top scored with 50, then made a run-a-ball 149 not out following on in one of the most famous Test matches ever played.

In the very next Test after that, he bowled England to victory by 29 runs by taking 5-11 in Australia’s second innings.

In the very next Test after that, he emerged at 104-5 and made a hundred and England won by 103.

In the very next Test after that, he took 10 wickets.

So yeah, don’t make Botham captain. Or maybe make him captain simply so that you can then benefit from him ceasing to be captain.

Thanks to everybody who’s funding King Cricket on Patreon. Your pledges help us do features like this. If you’d like us to do more, please flip us a shiny coin or buy us a pint each month. Don’t feel you have to, but huge thanks if you do.

We’re picking an England XI comprising the players we invested in the most.

It’s easy to overthink these things. Let’s not fall into that trap.

Andy Flintoff – and he was best back when he was Andy – was a cricketer we loved.

It seems important with hindsight that Flintoff was on the fringes for so long early in his career. He made his Test debut in 1998 but didn’t really do anything much until 2002. In that time he promised a lot.

This is the way it works best. You get a better return if you invest in someone not because of what they do, but because of what they might do. You need the very real possibility that you’ve pissed away a load of emotional energy for the payback to feel so powerful if and when it happens.

Oh how it happened.

For those first four years of Flintoff’s international career, we got glimpses. Getting picked raised his profile so that we paid more attention even when he wasn’t playing. County reports tended to say, “Flintoff made a hundred and there were loads of sixes.” Long before he was a halfway decent international cricketer, we all knew what kind of a player he was.

By the second Test of the 2001 India tour, Flintoff was opening the bowling. This was weird but handy. It made him feel useful even when he couldn’t get a run and that mentality probably helped him to his first Test hundred in the Nathan Astle Test a few months later.

In the 2003 home series against South Africa, he finally started batting the way we hoped he would. For a couple of years after that, the bandwagon increased in size and still struggled to accommodate everyone. Day three of the 2005 Ashes Test was probably the zenith.

There’s no need to further compact already well-trodden ground (here’s our tribute from when he retired if you want some of that) but there are two further points we want to make. Neither is especially important in the grand scheme of things, but they’re points we want to make anyway.

The first is about his catching. Ian Botham was an incredible slip fielder and Ben Stokes is a spectacular fielder in almost every regard – but has there ever been a more bucket-handed-seeming England slip fielder than Flintoff?

He dropped plenty – because cricketers drop way more than people think they do – but it always felt like he was going to take any chances that came his way. In our memory, he never even had to move his hands. The ball just headed straight for them.

The second point we want to make is that while some of the shine wore off as his playing career wore on (there was a bit too much posturing and playing up to the cameras), we’d actually say that Flintoff’s bounced back in our affections since retirement.

That’s pretty rare and it’s even more unlikely given some of the tacky TV cobblers he’s undertaken in recent years. But you know what? Whenever he talks about cricket or current cricketers or his own cricket career or even the world in general, he usually seems a fair-minded and self-aware individual. And that’s something.

5 minute read

In 2018, the ICC released a promotional video for the 2019 World Cup.

It starred Freddie Flintoff (definitely Freddie and not Andrew or Andy in this instance) and you can still find it on YouTube here.

We have a bunch of questions about it.

1. Is this what Fred does now?

Flintoff also did a song for the football world cup and it was both incredible and bad.

Apparently that was just practice, which explains why this particular world cup music video is incredible and slightly less bad.

2. How long would it take for the Daily News to fold?

The front page is weather, which is good, strong UK tabloid fodder. The back page is “CRICKET WORLD CUP IS COMING.”

This is (a) a woeful headline and (b) hardly a sudden and newsworthy development.

We’d suggest that the kind of newspaper that runs ‘cricket tournament that has been scheduled for years is shortly about to start’ as its main sports story is not one that is going to earn a huge and profitable readership.

The only way this makes sense as a back page headline is if there are about 15 different editions of the newspaper every single day – and if that’s the case, they’re going to go bust almost instantly.

3. Who the hell are these needy tag-alongs and what the hell is going in their heads?

We’ve seen Andrew Flintoff several times in real life. We have never once felt an urge to follow him.

Now we like Fred very much, but if we saw him and he suddenly broke out into song, we would honestly be physically repelled by this. We would rapidly begin to move in the opposite direction without hesitation.

What can possibly be happening in these people’s lives that they instead think: “Well this is unbelievably weird. I know – why don’t we not just follow, but actively join in.”

The two on the right are definitely on their lunch breaks, in which case this free time should be incredibly valuable to them and surely not to be frittered away on ex-cricketer-following wild goose chases.

4. What were these three guys doing before they joined in?

‘Just hanging around in town in my England clothes with my entirely normal hair.’

5. Is Charlotte Edwards the greatest facial actor in history?

Look at Charlotte Edwards’ face here and try and tell us this face doesn’t somehow crystallise all of the many conflicting emotions you simultaneously feel while watching the video.

Either (a) Charlotte Edwards is the greatest actor in history or (b) they didn’t warn her and this is just her genuine, honest reaction.

6. Why is there a police officer?

The opening gives the impression that this is one of those impromptu celebratory parades that often seem to occur in music videos and nowhere else.

If that’s the case, where did this guy come from?

What kind of impromptu celebratory parade has a police escort?

Maybe this isn’t an impromptu celebratory parade. Maybe we should stop thinking of it as one.

7. What is the guy at Mani’s Greengrocers doing?

This guy.

At first we thought he was a customer and that was maybe his rucksack in front of him.

But then we noticed that he has bright blue hands.

Either he’s wearing a luridly coloured disposable latex glove, like they use at crime scenes or he’s bagged something up.

The second option seems more normal, but it looks more like a glove to us, in which case who is he? Does he work at Mani’s? Is he Mani? (He’s certainly not Mani from the Stone Roses.)

If he’s just a customer, why is he putting a glove on and where is he putting the fruit? If he’s an employee, what is he doing? Also, why doesn’t he so much as bat an eyelid at the demented torrent of people pouring past him.

Maybe this one isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of things, but it’s bugging us all the same.

8. Who are these people and how did they know this parade would happen?

Did they have 4 and 6 signs lying around? Do they attend Tests annually but retain their signage from one year to the next? Did they see the parade coming on CCTV giving them time to dig out the signs and display them at the appropriate moment?

We’re pretty sure the guy’s not a proper cricket fan because a proper cricket fan would always wave the 6 as a 9. (We’ve no idea why this is the case, but we’ve seen it happen enough times to know that this is 100 per cent true.)

9. Is this one of the Currans?

Kind of looks like one.

Maybe not one of the current ones, but we assume there are more Currans still to come.

10. How long is this parade?

They start somewhere urban, they end at the Oval, but then at one point they’re here.

Is this one of those bits of London where they leave a field surrounded by big trees to try and trick you into thinking you’re not in London? (Nice try London, but we can still hear you.)

It’s also worth noting that going off the background, Charlotte Edwards’ bench is in this area but then when Fred acknowledges her, he’s back in suburbia (or possibly urbia (why does no-one say ‘urbia’?)).

This is a very slow response time. Fred’s reactions have deteriorated markedly since he was a professional cricketer.

11. In terms of famous cricketers, does the video mostly just feature people who happened to be in and around the Oval on the day that they were filming?

Fred obviously got the train down especially, but other than that you kind of feel like they just roped in whoever stumbled past.

Other than Edwards, we get Phil Tufnell (obviously) and Kumar Sangakkara (less obviously, but also totally obviously if we subscribe to the ‘in-and-around-the-Oval’ theory).

Greg James is there too. A Venn diagram pretty much demanded his presence because this is both music and cricket.

12. Where do you go after this last bit?

The problem with climactic moments like this is that everyone has to do something immediately afterwards and you’ve honestly got no room for manoeuvre. It’s all downhill from here.

We’re guessing that everyone looked around awkwardly; no-one really spoke; a bunch of people checked their watches and hurried back to work; and the Saint George’s Cross person got the Tube home, leaving little deposits of tinsel and ticker tape here there and everywhere.

Fred’s probably still there, pratting about with the beach ball or something.

< 1 minute read

There is more than one thing to celebrate regarding Andrew Flintoff’s return to competitive cricket, but surely this is the greatest. A county match report which doesn’t go on and on about how some no-mark is ‘pushing for selection’ is a rare thing indeed.

Okay, so in this instance the focus is on a somewhat showbiz comeback instead, but it’s still a refreshing change. And can anything in county cricket ever truly be considered ‘showbiz’?

We’re pretty sure we saw Flintoff in the supermarket the other day, but we can’t for the life of us work out which aisle it was in. We suspect that it was ready meals, but that would be really weird because we never go down that aisle except as a thoroughfare when either fresh meat or milk and yoghurts is blocked by dawdlers.

< 1 minute read

If there’s one thing that’s become clear from Freddie Flintoff’s slurred slights against acerbic Athers, it’s that the duff-kneed purveyor of forced laddish bonhomie cares little for freedom of speech.

“How can he talk about a player like Alastair Cook who is 10 times the player he ever was – he has a much bigger average and will go on and on. Atherton averaged in the 30s for England and yet he thinks he can judge others.”

You can’t, Athers. You can’t. You don’t have the right to judge anyone because you averaged in the late-30s. You probably wouldn’t have averaged in the 40s even if you hadn’t had a broken back for 90 per cent of the matches you played. Shut up. Shut up right now.

Here in Flintoff’s world, the right to express your opinions is earned through sporting prowess. Aristotle? Get back to me when you can play a decent forward defensive stroke. John Locke? Let’s see you get some crosses in the box before you start mouthing off.

If we want opinions, we’ll go to someone truly worth listening to, like Pete Sampras or Diego Maradona.

< 1 minute readAndrew Flintoff’s only going to retire the once, so we’ve written about him again.

A lot of people have picked apart his career with the recent past at the forefront of their minds, but we’re choosing to look at why he became such a significant figure in the first place.

People talk about charisma and how Flintoff could turn a match and they say he was popular with the crowds because he played like an enthusiastic village cricketer. These people aren’t missing the point exactly, but these are tired observations and they don’t fully explain his significance to a certain generation of England fans.

Was Flintoff a great player? If you could weight performances according to when you really, really gave a shit what happened, Flintoff’s averages would be a damn sight better than they actually are. We don’t watch cricket for averages.

The font size is quite small in that article, but if you do the old ctrl-and-scroll, you can make it bigger and more web friendly.

3 minute readThroughout his career, people talked about Andrew Flintoff being the new Botham. He wasn’t. He was the new Darren Gough. He was England supporters’ representative on the field of play. For the rest of this article, we will be referring to him as Andy Flintoff because that was what he was called when he became that figure.

ALWAYS look like you’re trying

Some players are great at cricket but the crowds don’t particularly take to them. Genuine crowd favourites are a rarity. Botham was one, Gough was one and Flintoff was one. It takes certain qualities to get the crowd onside and it’s not simply about runs and wickets. Mostly it’s about your attitude and your approach to the game. Andy Flintoff did not become a crowd favourite during the 2005 Ashes – that is a common misconception. He was already a favourite and he used that to his advantage.

How to bat – try and hit sixes

Violent batting is the way to people’s hearts – earthy, straightforward hitting that softens the ball through robust contact with both bat and boundary boards. Sixes help, but just putting your back into it is the main thing.

Darren Gough’s shot was the wild edge to third man for four. The runs weren’t the point; the helicopter rotor blades style follow-through that often knocked him over was the point. Flintoff was better than that. His shot was the lofted straight drive that he tried to land in his dad’s hands somewhere up in the stands.

For a long time, if there was a big match on and someone said ‘Flintoff’ to you with an urgent and excited look on their face, you would instantly know that this meant England’s fourth wicket had fallen and that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Bowling – put in the effort

You’re in a better position to win the crowd’s affections if you’re a fast bowler. It means you can show effort and flog yourself into the ground.

Andrew Flintoff became a top bowler, but we loved him because he bowled like a man who thought he could propel the ball through the batsman and into the stumps if only he tried a bit harder.

Flintoff’s flaws

We don’t want to write too much about the negatives, but they need to be acknowledged. They weren’t all his fault anyway.

The injuries were bad. We once said that he wasn’t built for fast bowling any more than an otter is built for refrigerating foodstuffs. It was frustrating for fans, so it must have been woeful for him. We still can’t believe they didn’t make him a bionic knee. If Flintoff doesn’t get one, who does?

We didn’t really care about the drinking, but we cared that he was known for drinking. It turned him into a cartoon figure; a caricature – and we thought he was better than that.

Late in his career, there were the celebrations. He won us over with genuine, heartfelt elation and when he became more calculated it felt a little like treachery to those of us who’d monitored Lancashire scorecards in those early days.

Cricket matches with corners

Far better to remember him for his finest quality. He gave England supporters the sense that something could happen at any moment. He made us think that the match could suddenly change direction.

Remember the over Flintoff bowled to Kallis?

That’s the kind of thing we’re on about. Supreme entertainment that just suddenly came from nowhere. Matches didn’t progress when Andy Flintoff was involved, they changed.

Lazy-minded people ascribed this ability to some nebulous concept that they called ‘the X-factor’ as if it were magic, but it was nothing of the sort. It was a combination of psychology, kidology, physical presence and reputation as well as one other quality that you can’t coach or buy.

Flintoff’s effect on the crowd

Because of the way he batted and bowled in those early days, Flintoff built a lasting rapport with England fans. If he showed any sign that he was going to do something remotely special on a cricket field, the crowd got behind him. When the crowd got behind him, the adrenaline kicked in. When Flintoff’s adrenaline kicked in, the crowd went mental. From there, very, very special things could happen.

Day three of the 2005 Edgbaston Test was Flintoff’s high water mark and if you want to study a player’s effect on a crowd as well as a crowd’s effect on a player, this is where you should start. Frankly, it’s also where you should finish.

The man came into bat with England 31-4. When the ninth wicket fell, he ignited a whole stadium full of people and used the blaze for power. Australia positioned most of their fielders on the boundary and still he went for sixes.

That evening he went one better.

It was 47-0 when Flintoff came on to bowl and all was flat. To put this over in perspective, he was on a hat trick with his opening delivery and that was possibly the least exciting ball. How many players can bowl overs where hat trick balls are repeatedly overshadowed?

Andy Flintoff took two wickets for one run (a no-ball) in that over, but what we remember – and what we’ll always remember – is the effect that he had on the crowd.

< 1 minute read

“Play as Freddie Flintoff and become an integral player for England in this fast moving, high scoring arcade cricket game.”

That should perhaps read:

“Play as Freddie Flintoff and engage in long, soul-destroying rehabilitation programmes that are ultimately unsuccessful. Slowly come to accept that your days as an international cricketer are behind you, even though you’re only 32.

“Now features Crying Into Your Puma Pillowcase While Having An Existential Crisis mini game.”

You can order it in advance and still have time to waterproof your Nintendo DS so that your salty tears of sympathy don’t knacker it up for when you want to play Club Penguin.

< 1 minute readIt was because of the bungee clause.

Flintoff’s agent, Andrew Chandler, explains why his client has turned down an incremental England contract which might have stopped him playing in the occasional lucrative Twenty20 tournament:

“There were one or two things in it that made it difficult to sign like he wouldn’t be allowed to participate in dangerous sports and he’s possibly doing a television series in which he may do bungee-jumping.”

What more reason could there be?

Chandler goes on to use the phrase ‘has to’ in an unusual way:

“He’s got three young kids and Andrew and his wife Rachel both spend reasonable amounts of cash so he has to make plenty.”

< 1 minute read

Andrew Flintoff should keep a close eye on all his cricket gear. Stuart Broad will have his bats, his pads and even his box given half a chance. He’s not waiting until the big man’s gone before taking over.

When Swann got North, we yelped like a female coati. When Broad bowled Haddin, we went up an octave. It sounded like a baby Bongolava mouse lemur had been kicked in the nuts.

We’re far happier seeing an England all-rounder of the future scything through Australia like a laser through hot butter. It bodes well for the future.