Freddie Flintoff's six landed in the stands, where his own father dropped it
At Edgbaston in July 2004, twenty thousand spectators watched Andrew Flintoff launch a ball into the Ryder Stand's top tier. One man rose to take the catch and spilled it: Colin Flintoff, the batsman's dad. A year later, on the same ground, his son would help swing an Ashes series.
Born in Preston on 6 December 1977, Flintoff was the son of a plumber and factory maintenance worker who captained a local second eleven. School at Ribbleton Hall produced nine GCSEs, a chess habit, and a nickname borrowed from Fred Flintstone. He left at 16, having already played for Lancashire Schools at under-11 and under-15 level, and went on to captain England Under-19s in Pakistan in 1996-97.
His Test debut against South Africa at Trent Bridge in 1998 opened a patchy spell. Selectors grumbled about his weight in 2000, and after a thumping 42 not out against Zimbabwe at Old Trafford he quipped that it was not bad for a fat lad. Dropped in 2001, he rebuilt his action, and on the 2001-02 India tour, after tears in the dressing room over his batting, he defended 11 in the last over of a one-day match by running out Anil Kumble and bowling Javagal Srinath on consecutive deliveries.
The numbers then flipped. Through 2002 his batting average sat at 19 and his bowling average at 47; between 2003 and the 2005 Ashes those figures became 43 and 28. His Edgbaston 167 in 2004 was a first-class best, and he was named the ICC's first one-day player of the year. In the 2005 Edgbaston Test he struck nine sixes across two innings, beating Ian Botham's 1981 Ashes mark, took seven wickets, and England won by two runs. Man of the series, a shared ICC player of the year award with Jacques Kallis, BBC Sports Personality of the Year and an MBE all followed.
Captaincy brought extremes: a 212-run win in Mumbai in 2006, then a 5-0 Ashes defeat in 2006-07 that matched the 1921 whitewash. Ankle trouble dogged him, and he left Tests after the 2009 Ashes and other cricket in 2010. A points win over Richard Dawson in a boxing ring on 30 November 2012, a 2014 comeback with Lancashire and the Brisbane Heat, and Top Gear presenting from 2019 until a filming accident in late 2022 kept him busy afterwards.
Source: Andrew Flintoff
