Flintoff pot-shots blown out of proportion

During last week's never-to-be-forgotten Ashes victory celebrations, a tired and emotional Andrew Flintoff was in fantastically candid form. As he swayed his way across London, pronouncement after pronouncement spewed forth from his booze-fuelled lips, all eagerly lapped up by a grateful media. "I'd never make a decent celebrity," he told reporters over a breakfast-time beer; "The Super Series is the worst prospect imaginable," he informed David Gower live from Trafalgar Square; "You're all my best friends in the world," he added for anyone else within earshot.

Thanks to a forthcoming autobiography that is set to become the publishing event of the year, Flintoff's revelations have scarcely abated since. Yesterday morning's papers included a humdinger - the throwaway rehashing of an incident in Delhi three years ago, when he claimed to have been shot from the stands by an air-rifle. "You expect to have plastic bottles thrown at you when you are playing on the sub-continent," he stated in his typically deadpan fashion, "but you don't expect to be shot."

Not surprisingly, his comments have been blown out of all proportion, transformed into a monumental rumpus, and furnished with indignant counter-claims from Delhi police. "Why is it that he is coming out with it now?" asked a spokesman, not unreasonably, although perhaps missing the point of an autobiography. In the circumstances, it is a great pity for English cricket that Sachin Tendulkar has been ruled out of next month's Super Series. Though Flintoff may deride the competition's significance, he would have benefited immensely from an audience with the world's leading exponent of life in the goldfish bowl.

But it's not just been a case of fans taking pot-shots at Flintoff. Freddie's had a few pops of his own, perhaps most significantly a swipe at Nasser Hussain, captain at the time of his second coming in 2001, and a man who has rightly been credited with bringing about the revival of the national side after their nadir of the 1990s. "Nasser did it with a style I didn't particularly like," wrote Flintoff. "I don't want to turn around and see my captain throwing his cap on the floor or kicking sods out of the ground ... I want his support."

It is an accident of Flintoff's new-found celebrity that these titbits have been sensationalised to the max. In fact, as Freddie would doubtless concede, Hussain's greatest feat of captaincy was the manner in which he recognised his allrounder's growing maturity. Hussain realised that his time had run its course and that the cadets of the coming generation, whom he had frogmarched across four continents, were ready to stand up for themselves. Without his formidable foresight, it is doubtful whether England would have been ready to regain the Ashes this summer.

Now, contrast Hussain's actions with those of the captain who refuses to go quietly. There are many similarities between Hussain and Sourav Ganguly (another man who has been in impressively candid form this week), ones that go far beyond their Indian heritage. They are both proud men with a backbone infused with arrogance, who built impressive Test careers in spite of some glaring technical shortcomings, and who defended their young players with the wrath of a cornered vixen as they hoisted their teams towards the top of the Test tree.

There, however, the similarities end. Hussain felt the fire in his belly flicker during the second of his unexpungeable Ashes drubbings, and had it unequivocally doused during the Zimbabwe debacle of the 2003 World Cup.

Within months he had vacated his post, before his apathy could affect the men he had led so well. Ganguly, by contrast, clings on without purpose as his team falters with him. The memories of his seismic series win over the Australians are now four years distant - the same amount of time that his opposite number in that series, Steve Waugh, said was the right tenure for a captain, given the demands of modern international cricket.

For the past week, Cricinfo's servers been log-jammed, quite literally, with the most apoplectic feedback I've ever witnessed. Reams upon reams upon reams of irate Ganguly fans, complaining in the bitterest terms imaginable about a perceived South Indian bias that has captured the tongues of our commentators and forced them to spew venom on a leader they once adored.

Not that I'd dare comment on the minutiae of such an accusation but, as an independent commentator who has witnessed the rise, plateauing and gradual descent of a side that only two years ago seemed set to take on Australia's mantle as the best team in the world, there seems only one man who can possibly carry the can. As Ganguly's young bucks might one day testify, from a bookshop near you, great things can be achieved when youth and vigour are permitted full freedom of expression.