Farewell, Freddie

Andrew Flintoff has announced that this summer is his last in Tests and that in future he will concentrate on one-day and T20 cricket.

It was inevitable. All he has been through, in hospital operating theatres, on physio's benches, running, jumping, skipping and hopping - not to mention resting restlessly at home - in the last five years has been of no avail.

No matter how long he takes to get fit, no matter how hard he and his personal guru Dave Roberts - the England physio at the time Flintoff first made the Test team - the result always has been the same. Another injury or the same injury repeating itself, another trip to the specialist, another operation, more weeks of physical activity designed to strengthen a joint that had not enough sinew left to ensure complete recovery.

He says it has been clear to him for some time that he must quit. "My body has been telling me that," he says and like the big man he is Freddie has decided that he will go after the Ashes.

What have we lost? A giant spirit, a fast bowler who at his best was the most destructive member of that clan in the world and a batsman who hit the ball long and hard and often.

During David Lloyd's time as coach 15 years ago he answered a press conference question by posing another. "I don't know if any of you lads have heard of a teenage all-rounder called Andrew Flintoff?" he mused. "Well, he's got all the signs of a Test player. I think we are going to hear a lot of him."

So we did. Bobby Simpson was the Lancashire coach at that time and told with an air of wonder about this kid who smashed the ball from one side of the ground to the other. Freddie - after Fred Flintstone - was rarely out of the headlines. He was as heavy as the world heavyweight boxing champion, he was amusing, he was a great fielder - with hands like buckets so he should have been - and not long after he made the England team he married one of the beautiful girls who used to look after us in the press box.

I am glad to tell you he never changed. He drank too much at times; what else was new? His best pals outside the dressing room and his family were the press lads he knew as a youngster at Old Trafford.

One of them is about to write yet another Flintoff book; another gets a regular call. I always felt happy to see Freddie in a restaurant any night, any place in the world, because I knew he would come over for a chat, Lancashire accent as thick as ever, glass in hand and as curious about how I and my partner Jo were as he was to talk about the cricket.

Sorry it has worked out this way, Fred. Inevitable that in the days of non-stop Tests, of two or three one-day games a week, of all that travel, a 16st body, wrapped around 6ft 5in and propelled about the cricket arenas as if tomorrow would always be too late, would one day baulk at the strain.

It is most difficult to understand why the medical staff are contemplating putting Flintoff in the side, Surely he needs the rest, surely just having announced his retirement he is not in the right mental state to play and it would be a chance to try the side without him.

He's an all-rounder, for heaven's sake. There is immense strain on such men and his body cannot take it any longer. Why take the risk, especially now that he is on his way out by his own admission.

Don't tell me the ECB in all its forms is about to make another ghastly mistake.