Do You Know What?

by Andrew Flintoff

  I was suspicious of cricket journalists. They weren’t the best of people and I didn’t like half of them. I’d sit in front of them and they were always trying to be clever, because they were after an angle. I tried answering in-depth, I tried ignoring people, but soon realised there was no best way of dealing with it. I got on with some of them, but only to a point. If I don’t trust people, I struggle to engage with them on any level. One minute the press would be all over me, proclaiming me to be the best thing since sliced bread, the next they’d be selling me down the river, just to sell a few more copies of whatever paper they worked for. I know they were only doing their job, but some of the stuff wasn’t doing their job, it was just unpleasant.

  After I was involved in the pedalo incident in the Caribbean in 2007 – when I was spotted dragging a pedalo into the sea in St Lucia, at 3 a.m., in the middle of a World Cup – I was genuinely embarrassed. I got a bollocking from Duncan Fletcher and when I was called in to do this press conference, to explain my behaviour, I had to walk through hotel reception, where all these England fans were gathered, and I couldn’t make eye contact with any of them.

  I realised I’d done wrong, and was very low about it, but after being grilled by all these journalists, I thought, ‘They’re having a crack at me for trying to get in a pedalo, but I’ve seen you lot hammered, men in your forties and fifties, behaving awfully, being rude and obnoxious, speaking to people like shit, falling over on the beach, so why are you judging me for my behaviour?’ Talk about flying the flag for their country. I get that they’re not playing cricket for England, but they are representing England through their publications, aren’t they?

  They’d bash out their 500 words as quick as they could after a day’s play so they could get away for dinner with their mates, and then turn up the next morning with a hangover, not knowing what was going on – what the pitch was going to do or how the weather might change the playing conditions. I’d listen to pundits and commentators and they wouldn’t understand what was being bowled, or they’d not know the players, or just talk for the sake of talking. I found it annoying when pundits and journalists were ill-informed or just plain incorrect. Sometimes they got it right – and I’d tell them if they got it right – but if you’re having to churn out pieces every day, you’re going to get things wrong. There were real double-standards, and I hated the hypocrisy.

  When I announced my retirement on the final day of the County Championship, they claimed I’d done it on purpose, to steal the limelight. Then, in the next sentence, they were writing nice things again. I found it cowardly. If you think I’m a dick, don’t start pretending you don’t, at least see it through to the end. I had a go at a couple of journalists in press conferences and they’re even more precious than sportspeople. They’d get all shirty, and I’d think, ‘Hang on a minute, you can criticise me, but I can’t criticise something you’ve written?’ Who do they think they are? I’ve blocked most of them on Twitter, because I don’t need them in my life.

  As a sportsperson, you’re expected to know everything in your late teens or early twenties. Obviously, you don’t. In almost any other job, by the time you get to the top of your profession, you’ve got half a life’s experience behind you. But in sport, you’re expected to be the finished article, physically and mentally, when you’re still really young. Your life drastically changes, you suddenly get all this attention and money and fame, and it’s a very difficult thing to deal with. People make mistakes in all walks of life, but when you’re a famous sportsperson, people are lying in wait, ready to jump all over you.

  It’s the tall poppy syndrome we’re famous for in Britain: they build you up and end up hammering you. But writing a scathing, negative story is easier than writing a good one. The same journalist who had a swipe at me for floundering after retiring from cricket attacked my BBC podcast colleague Matthew Syed on Twitter. I thought, ‘Hang on a minute, mate, this bloke you’re attacking is one of the best writers in the country, someone who travels the world giving lectures to all these blue-chip companies, a man who knows his stuff inside-out, and you’re taking pot shots at him from the sidelines.’

  It’s sad that journalists, ex-players (who are often twice as good in retirement as they actually were) and people on social media try to make a name for themselves by having a go at other people. I feel sorry for anybody who spends their days having a pop at people on Twitter. Is their life that bad that the only way they can make themselves feel better is by denigrating other people’s achievements? I imagine them to be blokes sat in their flats surrounded by cats, eating a Pot Noodle followed by a Caramac and swigging on a bottle of Tizer. If you can’t make a name for yourself, tough, but don’t try to stay relevant or gain an extra few readers or Twitter followers by being horrible to other people.

  I thought the fallout from the Aussie ball-tampering scandal was embarrassing. Ball-tampering has been going on for years. It’s a batter’s game, why not let the bowlers have a bit of an advantage for once? Sucking sweets and rubbing your saliva on the ball, throwing the ball into the dirt, lifting the seam, it’s all ball-tampering. The Aussies took it a bit further, but more than anything else, I just thought they were a bit thick. It was just ridiculously stupid, taking sandpaper on and giving it to the young kid to do. Yellow sandpaper! At least make sure it’s white or hide it on your thumb.

  What got me was this idea that nobody else in the Aussie team knew, apart from the captain Steve Smith, the vice-captain David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, the kid who was caught doing it. Give me a break. Anyone with that ball in their hand, reverse-swinging it all over the place, would have known what was going on. If not, I feel sorry for them, because they must have thought they were genuinely as good as Wasim Akram, my old Lancashire teammate, who used to be able to bend a ball around corners. It’s like driving a car, turning the power steering on and claiming you don’t notice.

  But what annoyed me more than the actual ball-tampering was the reaction to it. I was embarrassed for some of the people I’d played with, it was awful hearing old teammates trying to raise their profile on the back of other people’s misery. That’s another reason why I didn’t go down the punditry route, because I didn’t want to be that person.

  I also can’t pretend that I’m that bothered about things that happen in cricket. Someone will get picked for England and pundits will write these angry articles. But I’m never going to say, ‘Fuckin’ ’ell, I cannot believe Adil Rashid has been picked for England, I am absolutely furious about it. Where’s my pen? I must tell everyone exactly how angry I am in a newspaper article.’ Who gives a shit whether Adil Rashid gets picked for England or not? Get over it, Geoffrey Boycott!

  When I saw Steve Smith crying his eyes out on TV, I put out a tweet saying, ‘Happy now? Is this what you wanted?’ It was similar to when Pakistan’s Mohammad Amir was banned for spot-fixing, for bowling no-balls. It was dreadful, but he was a vulnerable 17-year-old kid who came from nothing, was still getting paid peanuts, was easily influenced and got involved in something he shouldn’t. That didn’t matter to some people, but I wanted him to have a second chance to redeem himself, and thankfully he has.

  What also got me was the sanctimony and the lack of empathy. I direct messaged Steve Smith on Twitter while it was all going on, because I felt for him. I interviewed him when I was working on The Project in Australia, and he’s a nice, polite lad. He got it wrong, but I’ve made mistakes too. He’s not Robert Mugabe, he hasn’t murdered anyone. I also like Darren Lehmann, but David Warner I struggle to have sympathy for.

  Not long after Ben Stokes was banned by England for having a punch-up outside a nightclub, I found myself in a similar situation in Milton Keynes. I’d just done a show, was heading towards the hotel – Lenny Henry’s house, Premier Inn – and two lads came up to me. One of them got right in my face and slapped me, so I grabbed the top of his head and pushed it on the pavement. While I had him down, I said to his mate, ‘Don’t even think about it,
because you’ll get it as well.’ As I was saying it, I was thinking about what had happened to Ben, and how it could go horribly wrong for me as well.

  So I said, ‘Mate, when I let go of your head, I want you to walk away, because if you don’t, this is gonna end badly.’ Luckily, because I hadn’t been drinking, I was thinking clearly. There was CCTV everywhere and I didn’t want to hit him anyway, I couldn’t think of anything worse. Thankfully, as soon as I released the bloke on the floor, they both scurried off. When I got to my room, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, ‘What is wrong with me? I’m six foot four, had a professional boxing fight and that little Herbert thought he could have a pop at me? Maybe I need a neck tattoo?’ A couple of days later, he sent me an apology email and said he deserved a black eye. Maybe I missed a trick.

  I’ve seen the footage of Ben, and the last ten seconds didn’t look good. And as a professional sportsperson, you’ve got to be careful about the situations you put yourself in. I’m not an aggressive person and I don’t know why anyone would want to have a fight, at least in the street. For me to have a fight, someone would have to hit me first, or I’d have to be protecting someone. I think Ben is that kind of person. If anyone has a go at any of his mates, he’ll be the first man in there. That’s what he’s like on a cricket field, and that’s one of the reasons he’s the great player he is.

  What irritated me was that I had journalists phoning me up, trying to equate what he did to my pedalo incident. I wasn’t having it. I tried to get in a plastic boat, I didn’t lump anyone. And there were the usual suspects in the media, ex-players making all sorts of assumptions, promoting their views on social media, even while the police investigation was still going on.

  I struggled with snides as a player. You don’t have to get on with everyone in your team, but it helps if everyone trusts each other. That wasn’t the case with the England teams I played in. In 2005, when the public and the press assumed we all got on like a house on fire, I reckon I trusted about eight of my teammates. The other three, nah.

  When I started playing for England, the dressing room wasn’t a friendly place and I felt like an outsider. It was awful, very disappointing. Michael Atherton, who I knew from Lancashire, was great, took me out for dinner with a reporter called Michael Henderson, who was a bit of a character and one of the few I actually liked. But when I first walked into the dressing room with my big bag, nobody moved. Everyone had their own spots where they changed, so I ended up next door, with the washing machines. Goughie was brilliant, as was his fellow bowler Angus Fraser, who’s a great man. Some of the others, not so much.

  At the time, England were rubbish, as they had been for most of the eighties and nineties. They never won owt. I’d watch them get hammered by Australia, they’d win one Test to make it 4–1 and celebrate like they’d won the Ashes back. It would make me cringe. ‘Boys, you’ve won one game. The Aussies already had their feet up, because they won the Ashes weeks ago.’ Despite that, some of the former players swan around as if they are all-time greats. They pontificate, criticise current players and harp on about how it was so much better in their day. The bowlers were faster, the batters were tougher, there were more characters. Problem was, lads, you didn’t win much! So many of these players are revered, but if I could choose any of them to play in the 2005 Ashes-winning team, I’d probably only have Gooch. (I couldn’t have Botham, because that would mean me missing out!)

  They were so insecure, there was more competition in the dressing room than out on the field. Andrew Caddick was jealous of Goughie, and they were supposed to be working in perfect harmony as our new-ball partnership. Batsmen were jealous of other batsmen who were scoring more runs than them. It was embarrassing. It was only when Vaughany took over and they got rid of the dead wood that the culture changed and we started winning. The only player from my early days with England I would have liked to have seen in the 2005 Ashes-winning team was Goughie. After that, nobody.

  I always made a big effort to make any new players feel welcome in the dressing room. I was secure enough in myself to do that. I didn’t see anyone as a threat, I saw them as a teammate first and foremost, someone I could help. Unfortunately, I got close to a couple of people, players I looked after when they first came into the team, who then dropped me when I needed their support. As soon as they had their feet under the table, they cosied up with the senior players and started knifing people. I’d sooner be open and get let down every now and again than closed all the time, but it’s difficult.

  But while sometimes the people you think will be there for you aren’t, other times someone you didn’t think you were particularly close to might surprise you. They might drop you a text or give you a ring out of the blue, and you’ll think, ‘Wow, that was nice.’ Similarly, there were players I wasn’t meant to get along with – according to sections of the press and the public – who I liked, such as Kevin Pietersen.

  I never saw Kev as a major problem, I thought he was a straight shooter. If he had a beef with someone, he’d have it out with them. He became a problem in the England dressing room because of jealousy. He could be awkward and difficult, but he scored a lot of runs for England. And when he was scoring runs, he wasn’t being awkward in the dressing room, because he was out in the middle. I appreciated Kev, because I could deal with him. Some people didn’t, because they couldn’t.

  What I couldn’t deal with was people making cheap digs behind other people’s backs. That’s why I’ve never written an autobiography that goes into great detail about my dealings with other people. If you don’t have enough stories about yourself to fill a book, don’t bother writing one. That’s why it’s called an autobiography, because it’s about you. I might tell the odd funny tale about teammates or coaches or opponents, but I’ve seen so many autobiographies recently by former teammates (and coaches!) that just seem bitter and twisted. Your memoir shouldn’t be about this or that person calling you nasty names in the dressing room, it should be more positive than that, surely? It reminded me of a piece of advice Duncan Fletcher once gave me: ‘The weakest way to criticise someone is in print.’ I thought, ‘That’s about right, well done, Duncan.’ Then he slagged me off in his book!

  It’s good that you can get an instant response on social media, but if someone has a go at me, I just block them. I don’t need that in my life. Who does? Actually, David Moyes. My mate, Big Bob from the social club, sent a letter to the Lancashire Evening Post, when Moyes was manager at Preston, saying what he thought was going wrong with the team and what could be done better. A few days after the letter was published, Big Bob got a knock on the door and when he answered it, Moyes was standing on his doorstep. He said, ‘About that letter you sent to the paper, I’d be interested in a chat.’ So Big Bob invited Moyes in, made him a brew and they sat down and had a deep and meaningful about football. Fair play to Moyes, but I couldn’t be having that. Imagine me going round to some theatre critic’s house, knocking on their door and saying, ‘Hello, luvvy, I’m here about your review of my performance in Fat Friends. When you said I couldn’t sing, I thought that was a bit uncharitable of you…’

  Then there are the people who retweet and like compliments. What is wrong with you (Bear Grylls)? I’ve stopped following people (Bear Grylls) purely because they do that. These people will be absolutely cracking it, doing all these amazing things in their lives, why do they need to tell everyone what Carol in Luton thinks about their latest programme? It’s pathetic. Matthew Syed and Robbie Savage retweet praise, and I hammer them for it on the podcast. Imagine walking down the street and shouting, ‘I’m a legend! Look at me! People think I’m great!’ That’s basically what retweeting praise is.

  I don’t like praise, at least false praise, and I hate being patronised. Someone could be saying something really nice and I’ll be thinking, ‘You condescending bastard.’ I’d sooner not be praised at all. And praise from me has got to be earned. If a woman has her hair done or buys a dress and it looks horri
fic, I’m not going to say I like it. How could you? You’re not doing anyone a favour by doing that. And I can’t congratulate mediocrity, as my kids are finding out. When my lad scored his first hundred for Lancashire, I praised him to high heaven, because he’d worked so hard to get there and I was so proud. But if either of them doesn’t perform, I’ll tell them they could have done better. It will be a constructive chat, but I don’t think it’s fair to tell them things are better than they are.

  Social media has turned everyone into narcissists. Occasionally, I’ll tweet something about my personal life and immediately think, ‘Why have I done that?’ Of the 1.4 million people who follow me on Twitter, I probably know about ten of them, if that.’ Go on Facebook and it’s just loads of people showing off about the great holiday they’ve been on, the big house they’ve bought, the expensive food they’ve eaten, or the wonderful family they’ve got. It’s rubbing people’s noses in it. Knobheads. They’ll not post any pictures of the big row they’ve had or the meal they’ve eaten in complete silence because the bloke wet the bed the night before.

  Another thing that bugs me about social media is when a famous person dies, everyone has to say their piece. You can’t move for RIPs on Twitter. If you post something that isn’t about that person’s death, even if you never met them, someone will pipe up and say, ‘Have you not seen the news? How could you be so insensitive?’ or ‘Why have you not said anything about such and such person dying?’ I want to reply, ‘Because I didn’t know them, it’s none of my business!’ But they’re just looking for a reaction, so I don’t give them the satisfaction.

  I hate myself for being on social media in the first place. I got my first mobile phone when I was 17, took it home and my dad said to me, ‘They’ll never catch on, you’re wasting your money.’ Now look at us. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is reach over, pick up my phone and check everything: text messages, emails, WhatsApp, Twitter. The irony is, I don’t even want to be reached. I spend most of my time dodging calls. It’s not that I’m a control freak, but I don’t like not being in control, if that makes sense.