Flintoff delivers on promise with emphatic Lord's show of defiance

Nothing became Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff's exuberant century against South Africa at Lord's last Sunday so much as the almost coy manner with which he acknowledged it. He raised his bat and took the plaudits of a packed house conspicuously aware, like the horn player on the Titanic, that there is limited value in virtuoso playing when the ship's about to go down.

But there is value all the same, witness the delight on the face of his captain, Michael Vaughan, when he struck the boundary that brought up his ton. Not many positives came out of Vaughan's debut as Test captain, but Flintoff's performance with the bat was a huge one. His bowling figures were somewhat less illustrious, but even so, he was the only England pace bowler to emerge with any credit. The second Test against South Africa in 2003 will arguably go down as the match in which the 25-year-old giant Lancastrian came of age as a Test cricketer.

Before this series began, Flintoff's Test averages were 47 and 19. That would have made him the world's greatest all-rounder had the 47 been his batting average and the 19 his bowling. Alas, it was the other way around, yet nobody questioned his selection because everyone knew his capabilities.

And on Sunday they were unleashed, never more so than when he smacked a quick, good-length ball by South Africa's 10-wicket hero, Makhaya Ntini, straight back over his head for six. Indeed, the thought occurred to this observer that Flintoff's buccaneering innings did absolutely nothing to diminish the comparisons with Ian Botham that have dogged him since he made his Test debut - coincidentally against South Africa - in 1998.

So commanding did he look at the crease that when Steve Harmison settled into a decent little cameo at the other end, the ghosts of Headingley '81 seemed to be stirring. Could it be, could it possibly be, that Harmison might play Graham Dilley to Flintoff's Botham? Regrettably, no. But it was comforting, while contemplating overwhelming odds against, at least to be able to fantasise about overcoming them.

That said, the "next Botham" tag has bedevilled Flintoff as much as any injury, and he has had lots, including chronic back problems, a double hernia, and, most recently, a compressed nerve triggered when one of the youngsters at Lancashire, to the boy's utter mortification, hit him in the nets with a beamer.

Another man of Lancashire, coincidentally with the same initials, recently told me of the frustration that nagged at him for years once he had been hailed as the next Olivier. "Who wants to be the next Olivier?" said Albert Finney, crossly. "I've known about 10 'next Oliviers' in my career."

So it is with Flintoff and Botham. "But then every England all-rounder gets that," Flintoff says, cheerfully. "Chris Lewis had it, Ben Hollioake had it. Anyway, Ian Botham's a legend. Nobody can ever emulate what he did."

I know, because he once told me himself in characteristic, straightforward fashion, that the "next Botham" label irritates the hell out of the original Botham, not because he thinks these cricketers unworthy of association, but because he thinks them undeserving of such a premature and frankly meaningless comparison. And in conducting this interview I was not even going to mention the name Botham, but then came Flintoff's innings on Sunday, not match-winning or even match-saving, but certainly match-redeeming. And so I ask what sort of relationship he has with Botham?

"Very good," says Flintoff. "We've discussed how to get the best out of my game, and he has told me just to express yourself. Recently I've been speaking to him about technical things with my bowling. I've been talking to Angus Fraser quite a bit, too. Because I predominantly take the ball in, and I've been trying to take it away a bit more consistently. I've been talking to them about finger position and seam position."

He gets up from the table to demonstrate. We are in the bar of a city centre hotel in Birmingham, where the sight of a huge, young man doing curious things with his arm does not seem to faze anyone.

"I need," he explains, "to get my wrist more behind the ball. I've got a bit of an ungainly action, I'm very chest on, so I have to get the wrist right."

And in so doing, not lose his most potent weapon, the delivery angled across the batsman which holds up and often finds an edge (or did before Graeme Smith and co made the England attack look - and perhaps feel, more worryingly - like Surbiton thirds).

He is conscious, Sunday's knock notwithstanding, that his batting technique needs refining, too. "One of the things I've been criticised for in the past is shot selection, so I've been working on trying to score runs consistently knowing where my off-stump is and covering it a bit more. And trying to play the ball a bit later. Sometimes I play a bit in front of myself, and lose shape on my shots, which means you lose timing and power."

Although a largely instinctive cricketer, Flintoff is the first to seek technical advice when he thinks he needs it. Yet unsolicited advice has sometimes been forthcoming at times when he could have done without.

In Michael Atherton's autobiography, Opening Up, the former England captain recalls disapprovingly the England bowling coach, Bob Cottam, trying to change things on the very eve of Flintoff's Test debut. Flintoff remembers it, too. "He was trying to tinker with my run-up, and I remember spending time with the batting coach, too, who was tinkering with my grip. It wasn't very good timing."

Flintoff will doubtless recall, as he takes the field in Thursday's third Test at Trent Bridge, that his Test debut took place not only against the same opposition, but also against the same backdrop. Flintoff bowled his first ball in Test cricket at Trent Bridge, to Darryl Cullinan, and his first wicket was that of Jacques Kallis, another powerful all-rounder with whom he is sometimes compared. But Kallis got his own back, claiming Flintoff's wicket in return.

"I got a bit over-confident, tried to hit him over extra cover. I didn't do very much in that match. It was the one with that famous passage of play between Atherton and [Allan] Donald in the second innings. Donald was bowling at the speed of light and I was next but one in, trying to get my head round the idea of going out there..."

Flintoff had yet to start secondary school when Atherton made his Test debut, in 1989, and the prospect of one day batting with him, for Lancashire let alone England, was well beyond his wildest dreams. Cricket wasn't even played at his Preston comprehensive, Ribbleton Hall. But his father played at local league level, and Flintoff was soon absorbed into the Lancashire schools system. He made his first-team debut for Lancashire in a minor-counties game in 1994, at the absurdly tender age of 16, and his first-class debut the following year.

"The dressing-room at Old Trafford was full of internationals," he recalls, "but they were all really nice with me. People like Atherton, [Neil] Fairbrother, [Wasim] Akram, these guys. Wasim was great with me, just fantastic. He pushed and pushed me, and tried to help me wherever he possibly could, like with reverse swing."

Having Wasim Akram as an instructor in the science of reverse swing, I muse, is like trying to become a faster driver with the help of Michael Schumacher.

"Yeah. I can't get the ball to go like he does, but if it's reversing I can bring it in. I used to watch him and see how he tried to set the batsman up. In fact, on my [Lancashire] debut at Hampshire, I dropped three catches off Wasim. It was one of the best spells of bowling I've ever seen. He was bowling at the speed of sound, angling it across them, angling, angling, and then letting this massive inswinger rip.

"I was standing at second slip, and David Lloyd had told them that I was useful in the slips, that I could catch pigeons there, and then this ball just hits me in the chest. I'd never seen anything like it. And I dropped two more. Neil Fairbrother was next to me, and he was in hysterics."

The same Neil Fairbrother now looks after him for Chubby Chandler's management group, which puts him in the same stable as the golfers Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood. It has to be said that Chandler, himself a fellow of generous proportions, appears to specialise in sportsmen of greater than average girth. Not that Flintoff ever welcomes the suggestion he is putting on weight, and, in fairness, he looks as fit this summer as he ever has.

"I'm 16[st] 4[oz]," he tells me, "and I'm happy at that. I wouldn't want to be any lighter. I did put weight on in my early twenties, and it was well-documented, but I found it hurtful and embarrassing. Nothing was said to me, but it came out in the press.

"Unfortunately I put weight on very easily. I'm constantly trying new diets. There are a few of us, like Marcus Trescothick and [the newly-retired] Darren Gough, who find it harder, especially when we're away from home and see what some of the other guys eat."

With his weight just about under control, Flintoff says, he feels more equipped to play Test cricket than he ever has, and remains "desperate" to improve his record. I wonder how much room for improvement he thinks there is. On a scale of one to 10, where would he place himself?

"No further than six," he says. "My basic technique is sound, and my work ethic's improved. And I've had a lot of help from [the Lancashire coach] Mike Watkinson, bowling and bowling at me from 17 yards." A grin. "He calls them his masterclasses."

Flintoff has certainly not lacked support in his rollercoaster of a career, although as with many young sportsmen deemed capable of prodigious deeds, he has sometimes, it has seemed, suffered a surfeit of support. But he clearly responds to the encouragement of those who know him best, and credits Chandler and Fairbrother with revitalising him when, overweight and out of form, he was dropped from the England team a few winters back.

"I couldn't have got in the St Annes first XI at the time," he concedes. "I was in a rut and couldn't get out of it, so I sat down with Neil and Chubby, and we tried to work out how I could get back in the England team. A few harsh words were spoken to me."

He asked to go to the England cricket academy in Adelaide "although it was all theory, not quite what I expected. Classroom stuff." Again, comparisons with the young Botham are irresistible. He would have been similarly disdainful of "classroom stuff", though would doubtless have expressed it less euphemistically.

Not that Flintoff deploys euphemism when I ask him what he considers to be the greatest moments of his international career so far. With the bat it was "the [October 2000] knock in Karachi with Thorpey [Graham Thorpe], when we put on at least 150". And with the ball? "I bloody enjoyed getting [Sourav] Ganguly out. He's my most prized wicket in Tests. But in one-dayers, [Sachin] Tendulkar, without a shadow of a doubt. I've had him twice, once in Madras in front of 120,000. He tried to hit me out of the ground and missed it, and about 30,000 people just got up and walked out."

His own dismissal, at Lord's last Sunday, had a not dissimilar effect. But in the end, unlike Botham at Headingley he failed to turn a match. It thus seems unlikely that he will yet be instrumental in turning a series, but, like you-know-who, he is a man with an apparently limitless capacity to surprise.

Andrew Flintoff yhe life and times

Born: 6 December 1977, Preston, Lancashire.

Batting/bowling style: Right-hand batsman; right-arm medium bowler.

County: Lancashire.

County debut: 1995.

Appearances for county: 105 first-class matches and 187 limited-over matches.

Batting averages for county: 34.98 (first-class) and 27.86 (limited-overs).

Bowling averages for county: 37.92 (first-class) and 23.22 (limited-overs).

Appearances for country: 23 Tests and 62 one-day internationals.

England Test debut: Against South Africa, Nottingham, 23 July 1998.

England one-day international debut: Against Pakistan, Sharjah, 7 April 1999.

Batting averages for country: 23.22 (Tests) and 27.04 (one-day internationals).

Bowling averages for country: 52.47 (Tests) and 26.01 (one-day internationals).

Highest Test score: 142 off 146 balls against South Africa, Lord's, August 2003 (highest score ever by a No 7 in a Test at Lord's).

Best Test bowling: 4 for 50 against India, Bangalore, December 2001.

Notable achievements: Made 137 against New Zealand in Christchurch, March 2002, and his inspirational performances for England made him the Player of the NatWest Series this summer; voted the Professional Cricketers' Association's Young Player of the Year 1998.

Thing you didn't know: Told to think of a more realistic option when he wrote "professional cricketer" on a careers form at school.

He says: "I've got to establish myself as a Test player. I've got to start winning Test matches for England. That's what people remember you for."

They say: "For a while, he seemed to have gone off the boil, but I think the innings at Lord's proved he is back playing to his potential." Andrew Hall, South African all-rounder.

"If he stays injury-free, he has the ability to be a future England captain." Nasser Hussain, former England captain.