Cricket: The Man Who Isn't Fred

"What are you going to write about today?" wondered Hannah, one of our nine-year-olds, at breakfast yesterday morning. "You should write about the man who isn’t Fred. He must be very sad." She is right, of course. On the eve of the announcement of the England captain to defend the Ashes, Andrew Strauss was launching his book Coming Into Play, which is a pity: The Man Who Isn’t Fred would have made a belting title. It was, admitted David Graveney, the chairman of selectors, a particularly difficult phone call to Strauss informing him that after much deliberation, it had been the other Andrew who had got the vote. Strauss, it is fair to say, while stating his full support for Flintoff, and taking the decision flush on the jaw, would have been a desperately disappointed fellow.

This was not a bitter leadership contest of a kind that is currently reducing the Labour party to a laughing stock. Chalk they may be, and cheddar, but these were two worthy candidates, champion cricketers both, each offering total commitment but with different skills. They are not, one suspects, soulmates (cricketers by and large have the game in common and little else) but mutual admirers of character. Had this not been a tour to Australia, it might well have been Strauss who carried the day, leaving Flintoff to his demanding all-round tasks.

But in the end, Fred’s colossal profile made the difference and won the day. If Australia’s captain, Ricky Ponting, says he is "surprised" by the decision, he fails to add whether cold shivers are running down his spine whenever he thinks about it. Perhaps he should sleep with the light on, like a spooked Shane Watson at Lumley Castle last summer - the bogeyman is coming to get them.

Strauss, though, has every right to wonder what on earth a fellow has to do to gain the confidence of the selectors. He led a rabble through a disastrous one day series against Sri Lanka, and maintained his cheery stoicism. Next he won a home Test series against Pakistan, the first time an England captain can say that for two decades. Finally came the resurgence of the one-day side at the end of the summer, so that another potential hammering was transferred into an honourable draw. Match by match, his confidence grew and with it his authority. It is hard to fault him.

Rejection is hard to take at any time, but sometimes it is easier to read the runes. Perhaps in his heart of hearts Strauss knew that whatever happened, Flintoff had loaned him the position, asked him to keep the seat warm, just as Fred had continually insisted he was doing for Michael Vaughan. Continuity, explained Graveney, is important to them, although in a sense, by handing the leadership back to Flintoff they are actually disrupting it. However, one aspect might well be that although Flintoff has captained Strauss, and stood alongside him in the slips, the role has never been reversed. How easy would it have been for Strauss to captain Flintoff? Mike Brearley man-managed Ian Botham superbly, just as Vaughan did Flintoff. But no one else quite carried it off in the same way.

Personal experience, though, tells me that if that is a factor, then it is particularly hard for the injured party to swallow. In the late 1970s, with Brearley on Test duty along with the Middlesex vice-captain, I led the county side in their absence, with, as far as I can make out, a 100% success rate in the championship. When, a couple of years later the vice-captaincy came up for grabs, I rather expected to be given it. It went instead to Phil Edmonds and the explanation given to me - "we feel he would be a better leader than led" - rankles to this day. I am not proud now of my reaction whenever Edmonds was in charge, which involved playing for everyone but him.

Since this column has become a little like Poetry Please these past couple of weeks, I revisited yesterday a verse in a small volume called Man in the Long Grass for which I wrote a foreword. The last two lines of the poem Dropped summarised it succinctly: "Though bile makes a bitter cup/I can’t but hope they fuck it up." Team England, one hopes, have a stronger bond.