This Ain't a Love Song, this is Goodbye - Freddie Flintoff Retires too soon.

The right way to remember Freddie.

Alas, It's true. Freddie is gone.

It wasn’t a bad innings was it? The chronic injuries have finally forced Andrew Flintoff to hang up his boots and retire from world cricket. Everybody loved Freddie; everybody will miss him - none so more than me. Yet, I also feel quite let down by him. He messed it all up, and he only has himself to blame. Not so much Yabba-dabba-do, as Yabba-dabba-doh.

Freddie was named Freddie because he was a bit of a porker like the cartoon character, Fred Flintstone. In the early days, he did his best to live up to the role. After a one-day man of the match performance in 2000, he jested that his performance was "not bad for a fat lad".

Happy Days.

I was lucky enough to meet Freddie in 2003, and he was quite simply a brilliant guy. It was also obvious he wasn’t what you would call a professional athlete. Even calling him an athlete was almost a stretch too far. He had just finished playing a one-dayer for England and he didn’t hang around for the ceremonies. He rushed to the bar for a fag and a beer on the balcony of the sponsor’s box which is how my friend Kim and I bumped into him. He stayed there for a further three hours on the same strict dietary regime.  

This was at a time the game was changing; it was about professionalism and central contracts. Something didn’t seem right.

Parental Advisory - man boobs galore.

He seemed to knuckle down from 2002 to 2005, by far the most productive period of his career, and he was seemingly all set for superstardom.  It started with the 2002 India series, and a match winning bowling performance in a one-dayer. He was tearing round the pitch topless at the end. It climaxed with his man of the series performance in the victorious 2005 Ashes series, and THAT incredible over against Ricky Pointing.  For those two or so years, he averaged 43 with the bat and 28 with the ball. Pretty sensational.

Hello, mine's a double.

He should have been at his peak and carried it on. Instead he chose to turn up to the Ashes parade completely off his face and was stupid enough to do a live TV interview (you have to see it to believe it). It was the beginning of the end.  The Fredalo affair at the 2007 World Cup was an accident waiting to happen. On the 2007 Ashes tour where he was captain, he had three or four warnings for inappropriate behaviour and binge drinking, and arrived ‘hungover’ (or pissed to be more precise) for a training session. England lost 5-0.

The new Brand Flintoff.

I think he woke up a bit after this. He tried to get serious. He changed his image, his approach and even his brand. He moved on from a caveman ‘hell for leather’ brand to a swish little AF corporate machine.  Someone must have had a word. Or he himself realised he had one last chance and that the lucrative IPL was steaming along.

By now his body was badly letting him down. I met him again in 2008 in Dubai where he was using the same gym as me as part of his rehabilitation – a lot of visiting pro athletes used that gym – only tennis world #1 Roger Federer put in more work than Flintoff. He was seriously committed to getting back in shape. It was exhausting just watching him.

But it was just never to be. When England defeated Australia at The Oval to seal a 2–1 series win in 2009, neither his bowling nor batting had a huge impact on the series. There was a typical piece of Freddie magic, when he ran out the Australian captain Ricky Ponting, from mid off. But it was just that, one spectacular moment.

He will always be remembered for those brilliant moments. He will also be remembered for not being able to sustain it throughout his career. And that is what hurts.