Andrew Flintoff's Diary

Monday

Woke up early and drew the curtains in apartment 216 of Palm Jumeirah Luxury Beach Residence Tower No 3, and the Dubai sunshine whacked me right in the face. 'Yep,' I said to myself, 'it's bloody brilliant being Andrew Flintoff of Lancashire and England'.

At brekkie, I accidently knocked my glass of juice all over the floor. The missus had a right go at me, but I swear that my little lad jogged my arm, not that Andrew Flintoff is about making excuses. And anyway, Rooster spilled his cuppa on the coffee table the other day, and that was far worse, so it's not just me. If my mate Harmi had been here, he'd have put her straight. He knows what I'm like. 

Chubby phones and runs me through this freelance thing again. 'I'm always available for Lancashire and England,' I tell him. 'You're right Fred, you are,' he says. 'But sometimes you won't be playing for them, you'll be playing for the Dolphins or the Super Kings or the Leeward Islands if they ever pick up the bloody phone. Cos you're the world's first freelance cricketer, just like I told you.'

I still don't really get it, but apparently it's good for the old bank balance. Got to put a few drinking vouchers in there for me old age. He told me I had to think of myself like a golfer going off to play in all these different tournaments. I said, 'Chubby, I'm no bloody good at golf,' but he just sighed and hung up the phone.

Tuesday

I'm not a hundred per cent sure where this Dubai place is, but it's bloody sunny. Got a bit bored, so I decided to do one of my legendary wind-ups on Rooster. Went to cut all the toes out of his socks but he'd hidden them, so I cut the ends off of the missus's tights instead. She started shouting on about it, so I told her it was one of the kids, not me. 

Wednesday

Straussy and the boys are doing well over in South Africa, but I was bloody gobsmacked when they put up the names of the lads who were playing against the Saffers on the telly and one Andrew Flintoff wasn't amongst them at number six on the batting order. I rang Chubby and I told him straight, in my opinion I'm available and fit to play. He reckoned that Flowersy had told him I was on crutches and couldn't walk, but if you ask me it's just like Headingley all over again. Told Chubby to phone the bloody papers and leak it. He said he would, but there's been nothing in the Dubai Straits Times yet.

Thursday

I've got another book out! Had to fly back to England to talk about it. I don't know what all the fuss is about on writing books. It's bloody easy. I've done three already, no trouble at all. You just spend the afternoon with this fella, telling a few stories, and bosh, a bit later there it is, in the shops for Christmas. This one's called Ashes To Ashes. I wanted to call it The Andrew Flintoff Book On Cricket but they said no, maybe the next one. That's alright, I reckon I've got another few books in the old Freddie brainbox yet. It's got a great picture on the front of me doing my celebration, kneeling down with me arms out. I invented that, I did. Chubby said he's trademarked it, too, which is probably good.

Friday

Whey-hey! Friday night tonight! Where are all the pubs in Dubai?

Saturday

Can't believe it! Chubby rang and said that the ECB wanted him to write a letter confirming my availability for all England games. I said I thought I was freelance now, but it's bloody confusing. Chubby said just leave it to him, so I have. He had some ace news though - I might be on the telly - doing bungee jumping! Well you know, Goughy's got his show where he wears a silver jumpsuit and tries to get through holes in a wall, and Tuffers is doing the dancing thing, so it's like Chubby said, bungee jumping's all mine. An untapped market he called it. All I know is that my aim is to be the best bungee jumper in the world. I'll leave the rest up to Chubs. See ya!

Call off the sex

Rest easy, WAGS of India. Sleep soundly. It wasn't Gary Kirsten  who put out the booty call. 

It reminded me of a story that a heavyweight boxer once told me. His trainer was vehemently anti fighters having sex in the weeks before a fight. He said that rather than increase aggression it reduced it, and released too many feel-good hormones. 

This boxer was something of a ladies man, and he had a new girlfriend. The ban was driving him and her crazy. His girlfriend made it her mission to break the ban. She tried everything, and one night, he cracked. Next day in the gym, he had to start his session with a few rounds on the pads with his trainer.

After no more than two punches, the trainer stopped him.

'You had sex last night, didn't you?' he said.

'Yeah,' the boxer fessed up. 'I did. How the hell did you know?'

'Felt the difference straight away,' the trainer said. 'Your legs are weak'. 

So ended his pre-fight misadventures...

Nowt wrong wi' that

A superlative Boycs story:

On one of Ian Botham's first England tours the great man was struggling with form, so Beefy dropped by his hotel room to offer commiserations. Boycott was inside, naked except for his pads. He told Botham to sit on the bed, picked up his bat and demonstrated the famous forward defensive.

'Now tell me what's wrong with that,' Boycs said. 'Nothing, that's what'.

10ft lizards, grassy knolls, Michael Vaughan

No wonder unemployment's in the millions. Cricketers have got all the jobs. Andrew Flintoff's going to have five or six. Michael Vaughan's got three. Alec Stewart and Sir Ian Botham have a couple too. And we know all about Ashley Giles. 

Vaughany will be a busy boy mentoring young players for the ECB, working as a business development manager for Chubby Chandler's ISM and commentating for Test Match Special in South Africa. As David Hopps notes, Vaughan joins Alec Stewart and Ian Botham as high-profile broadcasters who have potential commercial links with some of the England players that they commentate on [Stewart has an interest in an agency that acts for Matt Prior, Botham is Chairman of Mission Sports Management, which represents both him and Kevin Pietersen]. Vaughan's chums at Chubby Chandler's include Graeme Onions and low-profile limited overs journeyman Freddie 'Andrew' Flintoff.

As the great Hopps goes on to say, 'There was a day when, irrespective of the honesty of the person concerned,  this would have been condemned as an unacceptable clash of roles'.

But then we exist in the new world where it's no problem for an England selector to work as Director of Cricket at one of the counties he's choosing from. New school tie, anyone?

No excuses

'Searingly honest' is a phrase publishers love to attach to celeb autobiographies. It's sexy and it's salable. It's also a euphemism for 'I'm now going to admit to all that stuff that I denied at the time'. 

Naturally enough, it's been the key bit of blurb for Andrew Flintoff's newie, Ashes To Ashes, just the third autobiog he's managed since 2005 [Sheesh, Freddie's better than you'd think at this writing game; Amazon is also pre-selling a fourth, Good Times Bad Times: Ready For The Fightback, due for publication in October 2010 - and what a loomingly prescient title that might be...]

The whole point of an autobiography is that it's self-serving, and sporting ones are generally an unappealing gloop of false modesty and hand-wringing justification, but Flintoff's seems particularly craven, judging by the extracts on offer in the Daily Mail. 

There's the time he had 'quite a late night' on Australia Day 2007 and then 'didn't help things by having a couple of drinks on the plane' the next morning but - having been sent away from nets for not being able to throw properly - he 'wasn't as bad as Duncan said'. Fred 'wasn't going to make excuses' though, except that 'My wife Rachael had gone home and I probably needed someone to get hold of me and tell me to cut it out', and that 'I wasn't the only one... it was like being on a booze cruise'.

Then there was the time he got pissed at an England football match in Germany and gave a boozy interview to the BBC ['I had a couple of glasses of wine with lunch which must have topped up what I had the night before']; the pedalo in St Lucia ['Other people were out later than I was and I truly believe the morale of the squad had gone before then']; and the one where he missed the team bus to pay respects to the fallen at Ypres ['We had a late night. I wasn't the only one who was late down, but I was the only one who missed the bus. I'm sure if Harmy had been there, he'd have come and got me, because he knows what I'm like'].

Actually Fred, we all know what you're like. You've just brought out a book telling us. Flintoff carries with him an enormous amount of goodwill: he's not a bad guy. He is though more complex than such stage-managed mea culpas allow. The book can also be read as an exercise in media control - firstly in how the stories were originally spun, and then again as how they can later be sold. 

Stop digging...

Isn't it time that Chubby Chandler just kept quiet, if only for a few hours? Anyone would think he was trying to get some publicity for himself.

NB: Andrew Flintoff must be chuffed that the Chandler vision of his future is one of bungee jumping on saturday evening TV. Darren Gough watch out...

Box clever

The single most remarkable piece of cricket gear I have ever seen resided not in a batmaker's den or the Lord's Museum, but in the bottom of a club kitbag in the dressing room of one of the first teams I ever played for.

The concept of the club kitbag has almost died out, but back then most sides had a couple of guys who weren't bothered about owning equipment of their own and who were happy to delve around in the club bag for a pair of mismatched pads, some sweat-stained gloves, maybe a mildewed thigh pad that they could use and then chuck back in at the end of the day. 

Within this particular bag, it lay. A stitched-in manufacturer's label described it as an 'abdominal guard' but that hardly did it justice. It looked like something Henry VIII wore to the jousting, a great tin codpiece attached to a wide, padded v-shaped belt that had to be stepped into like a jockstrap and then secured around the waist with a couple of long ties. 

It was universally known as 'Cyril's Box' after the only man who would [or could] wear it, the first team wicketkeeper Cyril. He was a remarkable man, mid-fifties, squat, powerful, with giant, hooked hands permanently ingrained with grease. I never discovered what it was that Cyril did, but it was some kind of hard physical labour that had produced both great strength and admirable stoicism. He barely ever said anything; just turned up in the dressing room every saturday, stripped off his streetclothes, retrieved the box from wherever he had thrown it the week before, strapped himself in, pulled the rest of his gear over it and walked out onto the pitch.

Like Rod Marsh, Cyril had iron gloves. The ball often used to fly off of them at tremendous speed, accompanied on crucial occasions by a muttered oath. He'd sometimes stand up to the opening bowlers, usually without explanation, and it was then that the abdominal guard earned its corn. The ball would smack Cyril in the vital area, and then richochet away with a metallic clang. On one famous occasion, a batsman was caught at second slip direct from Cyril's box and the game took a while to restart: several people were actually crying with laughter.

After a match, Cyril would silently remove it, sometimes pushing out a dent with a thick thumb. He'd get changed back into his streetclothes and then wander up to the pub, his love for the game expressed perfectly and eloquently in the slow satisfaction of his walk.