Mumbai
Wednesday, February 6, 2002

It had been quite a day for Andrew Flintoff. At about 1.30am - the morning after the day-night before - he sat in the plush, leafy surroundings of Mumbai's Taj Mahal hotel. The rest of the team would join him in a while, but for now Freddie sat alone, caressing his pint as if it had been pulled in Preston, and quietly ringing friends on his mobile. He looked exhausted. The road to Mumbai had been full of potholes and pitfalls.

Three hours earlier Flintoff had made history by becoming the first bowler to celebrate by imitating Ryan Giggs. The torso wasn't as hairy, the sixpack less defined, but the jersey-swinging elation was just as infectious. It was the peak of Flintoff's career: at last, the troughs were fading from view.

Flintoff's progress has been one of the most heartwarming aspects of Nasser Hussain's reign. He started the English winter in Adelaide with the new National Academy, but flew to India when Craig White announced that his 90mph days were over. It looked like a classically muddled piece of English selection, but turned out to be a master-stroke. Flintoff arrived in India as a batsman who could bowl 15 back-breaking overs a day, quickly became a front-line bowler who couldn't bat at all, and finished the tour closer to allrounder status than ever.

Until the last two months his England career had been more of a Bombay mix. In 1998, at the age of 20, he made a pair in his second Test, then biffed four sixes in a brutal fifty against Pakistan at Sharjah. He began the 1999-2000 series in South Africa with scores of 38 (after England had folded to 2 for 4), 36 and 42, before falling away, but two cheap wickets at Port Elizabeth were the first sign that his lumbering frame might be capable of Test wickets.

But his batting got worse: 51 runs in five innings against Zimbabwe and West Indies in 2000 cost him his Test place, and mutterings about his lack of application grew louder. So loud, in fact, that when he spoke to Sky after thrashing Zimbabwe for an unbeaten 42 in a one-day game at Old Trafford, he issued a stinging riposte: "Ay, not bad for a fat lad." An epic 60-ball 84 at Karachi looked like The Big Breakthrough, but his dodgy back was getting dodgier and, after he failed to light up Sri Lanka, Flintoff was told not to come back until he was willing to put in the work.

And yet he was the elephant Hussain and Duncan Fletcher never forgot. He returned, chastised and leaner, for the one-day side for the trip to Zimbabwe in October, and when White's confidence waned again, Fletcher called for Freddie once more, suspecting that his back-of-a-length bowling would trouble India's batsmen. It was a typically insightful call.

And it was the making of Flintoff - for a couple of reasons. First, he had been doing his Pilates exercises, crucial for the bad back that had threatened to ruin his bowling. Second, he revelled in the extra responsibility created by the absence of Darren Gough and Andy Caddick in the Test series: at Mohali he took one of the best 0 for 80s in Test history, pounding his way through 34 whole-hearted overs in the searing heat; at Bangalore he exploited a seaming wicket with the ruthlessness of a Richard Hadlee. Third - no wincing now - there was his batting. It was so stiff-wristed for most of the tour - 62 runs in his first eight international innings - that he simply had to knuckle down.

The work worked. His new maturity shone through not so much in the biff-bang-wallop 52 in 39 balls at Delhi (we all knew he could do that), but in the careful 40 at Mumbai, where he squeezed a series-saving 81 runs out of the last three wickets like a big, blond Steve Waugh. And when India needed 11 to win off the final over, Hussain threw the ball to Flintoff, which was a sign of trust.

Has Freddie grown in confidence? You bet he has. Why else would he be willing to show off his new pecs to the world? Ay - as he probably told his team-mates - not bad for a fat lad.

Lawrence Booth is our assistant editor. His English Angle appears on Wednesdays. He will be covering England's tour of New Zealand for Wisden.com.

More English Angle

England in successful defence shock

Hussain v Brearley

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd