Do You Know What?

by Andrew Flintoff

  The family always gets a sportsperson at their worst. When you win, you’re out celebrating with the lads. When you lose, you go home sulking. I sometimes didn’t speak for three days after. I’d just sit there smouldering, playing the game over and over in my head. I’ve been guilty of doing that in my post-cricket career as well. I sometimes wonder if what made me a successful sportsperson has turned out to be my biggest weakness – the selfishness, that desire to score runs and take wickets, nothing ever being enough, always wanting more.

  It was a nightmare for my wife at times. We had to move our wedding three times. I missed anniversaries, the birth of my second son. Rachael had to drive herself to hospital, give birth, drive herself home and then buy fish and chips for my mum and dad. She was very good about it, said that when my son is older, I can tell him I wasn’t there because I was captaining England. Hopefully that will be good enough. When I found out, I was in the back of a car in Chandigarh, with Duncan Fletcher. Rachael phoned and I said, ‘What’s that in the background?’

  ‘That’s your son.’

  ‘Oh, so you had the baby then?’

  I said to Duncan, ‘I’ve got a new baby boy.’

  Duncan replied, ‘Oh.’

  Then there were the various misdemeanours which needed explaining. After the pedalo incident, I had to phone Rachael up, to warn her about the coming media storm.

  ‘Hello, love.’

  ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Yeah, just off to the press conference.’

  ‘Think you’ll win tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m not playing. I’ve been banned.’

  ‘What have you been banned for?’

  ‘Are you sitting down?’

  I then had to explain to my wife that her 27-year-old husband was spotted trying to get into a pedalo at 3 a.m in the middle of a World Cup.

  There’s a voraciousness in me. I’m like Pac-Man, chomping through life. In the sporting world, that works. In a family environment, it doesn’t. Nothing is ever good enough and I’m always looking to the next thing before I’ve finished whatever it is I’m doing. But now, if I miss out on work and the money, because my family are calling the shots for once, I’m less bothered.

  That’s another reason I never could have become a pundit. I saw the other lads do it, spending all those months away from home, missing their kids growing up, and realised I had to take another route. But taking another route meant I was on less solid ground, taking jobs I wasn’t exactly crazy about doing. Sometimes I’d be sat there in a far-flung hotel room thinking, ‘What’s all this for? When will it stop? I might only get another 40 summers, I might get less. And kids grow up so fast.’

  I was doing something on the internet recently about who had the best beard, which meant I was missing one of the boy’s cricket matches. Seriously, where would you rather be? Then again, other fathers go to work at 7:30 a.m., get home at 7:30 p.m., so they’re probably missing out on more than me. I’m doing nothing different, I’m just weirder than most dads.

  When I was in Australia filming a TV show, I was staying in a hotel in Sydney Harbour, which sounds wonderful, but didn’t stop me having a wobble. I opened the curtains one morning and could see the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the sea, the sun, and all these people out and about enjoying themselves. But I was on my own. There might be people reading this and thinking, ‘He’s in Sydney, he’s on the telly – what’s his problem? He doesn’t know how lucky he is.’ But it doesn’t matter where you are or how nice your hotel is, if you’re missing the people you love, it can be horrible.

  That’s not to say I’d ever quit working completely. As much as I love being at home and around the family, I couldn’t just do nothing. I need to be stimulated, mentally and physically. What would I do all day? Sit about and watch TV? Go to the gym, come home and do what? Have a cup of tea and twiddle my thumbs? Play golf on the same course every day? I’d end up topping myself.

  CHAPTER 21

  PARENTS

  Doing things my way

  I’m proud as punch of all three of my kids. If one of my kids does something amazing, something they’ve worked really hard to achieve, I get more out of that than anything I’ve ever done or ever will. I am proud of things I achieved during my cricket career, but watching your kids do their thing is on another level entirely.

  I never thought I’d want my boys to play cricket, not so much because of the game, but because of the pressure. But they love it. Watching my boys on the field wearing the Lancashire rose just like I did when I was a kid makes me incredibly proud. But I get so nervous watching them, more so than when I played. I could control my performances to an extent, but I’ve got no control over them. I just want them to do well, because it makes or breaks their day. Cricket is a strange sport, in that you make one mistake and you’re off. In football, you can make a terrible pass or score an own goal and still have 90 minutes to make up for it.

  My daughter is a good athlete but singing is more her thing. She sings solos at school. My nan, who died a few years ago, used to sing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ with me when I was a kid, and my daughter sang it in front of the whole school. That brought a tear to the eyes.

  Commitment is a big thing for me. I always say to my kids, whatever it is you do, do it the best you can. In sport, I want them to be ruthless. When they’re practising their batting, and I’m feeding the ball into the bowling machine, I don’t want them to be thinking about anything else apart from what they’re doing. I have fun with them and I can handle them failing, but I can’t handle them not trying. And because I’ve seen both sides of it, they can’t get one over on me, I know if they’re giving it their all or not.

  After the boys have played, we’ll go and have a chat about things, discuss whether they’ve done what they’re capable of. They’re at the age where I’ve started to be a bit more blunt with them. If I’m hard, it’s only because I want them to strive to be better. I can accept failure, but I cannot get my head around anyone not trying. I get annoyed, and that stems from the fact I wasted the first part of my career. They were years I never got back, and I don’t want my kids to ever have any feelings of regret. There have been times when I’ve been in the nets with one of my boys and I’ve both got frustrated and said things I shouldn’t have. But I want them to make it for themselves, not for me. I also want them to do something they love and are passionate about. For me, it was cricket. For them, it might be something else.

  I can see the passion they have for the game, but it’s different. I wasn’t from a privileged background, financially at least. In terms of love and support, I couldn’t fault it. My mum and dad took us everywhere, slept in the car when I was a kid on tours, broke the bank for my kit. From that comes a desire to pay them back. But I also had to do it myself to some degree. Now, sport is very different. Academies are fantastic in some respects, because of the level of teaching and the opportunities they provide. But I do think they can affect a young player’s hunger. A lot is done for them – a lot of the nitty-gritty that used to shape players – so that when they’re challenged in the real world, it’s more difficult to work things out.

  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the best footballers come from poorer backgrounds, so for me it’s about finding the balance between giving the kids what they need and not spoiling them. When I take the boys to Old Trafford nets, they’re rubbing shoulders with Lancashire players. Imagine that? That’s normal for them and it’s great, but it’s a completely different world from the one I grew up in, and that worries me a little bit. It might be a better way of doing things, it’s just not the way I’m used to.

  I loved playing against the posh kids, with all the latest gear, that’s where I got some of my hunger. I was offered scholarships to schools from all over the country, but I didn’t go, because the men’s cricket I was playing was a better grounding than schoolboy cricket. I was tempted to send my kids to state schools. Instead, for various reasons, they go
to private schools, get a great education and, bless them, they appreciate that. But I also don’t want them to take anything for granted. I sit on the boundary watching my boys play at this wonderful school with playing fields as far as the eye can see, and think, ‘Wow, this is incredible.’ They do play on more basic club grounds for the county, so maybe their cricket education is actually more balanced than mine was. But I sometimes I wish they were playing on grounds with dog shit all over them and smackheads in the playground next door.

  When I played cricket as a kid, my dad was in the same team, so if anyone had a go at me, he’d step in. If anyone had a go at one of my sons, I’d do the same. In some ways I’m a pushy parent, but I’m not one of those idiots who shouts at them from the boundary, telling them what shot they should have played or where to move the field. I think those kinds of parents should be shot.

  I watch the boys play football as well, but the only time I’ve ever shouted anything was when one of them had their shirt hanging out. I have to stand behind a rope, which I thought was weird at first, because I’m a 40-year-old man, not a teenage nutcase. But when you see how some of the other parents behave you realise why the railing is there. There will be some 15-year-old kid refereeing and he’s being shouted at by grown men. Grown men. Shouting. At a 15-year-old referee. There will be 20-stone blokes, who were probably bloody useless footballers anyway, screaming at their kids, ‘Get here! Go there! Get rid of it!’ I’ll be standing there thinking, ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  I was watching one of my lads bat a few years ago and this dad kept appealing against him from the boundary. I walked up to him, tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Mate, get a life. Think about it for a second – you’re appealing against an eight-year-old boy. What are you doing?’ I genuinely love watching my boys play, but I struggle sitting on the boundary with other parents, because I just can’t deal with the chat. I might not know about a lot of things, but cricket is one of them. I’ll be sat there listening to mums and dads going on about what happened in the last game, what people scored, what so and so did wrong, what so and so should improve on, and it drives me nuts. I try to sit with my mate Nigel, just to be away from it, because it can seriously ruin my day.

  That’s the worst thing about kids – parents. You know when the kids are in the pool on holiday? You see them throwing a ball about with some other kids and then they start chatting? When that happens, that’s when you’ve got to be on your guard. The last thing you want is your kids bringing over their new mates, because that means one of their parents will soon come wandering over, saying stuff like, ‘Oh, we’re taking the kids to the waterpark this afternoon, would your kids like to come?’

  No!

  ‘Oh, we’re having lunch in this lovely restaurant today, would you and your wife like to come?’

  No!

  ‘Oh, we’re thinking of having drinks in the bar after dinner, would you like to join us?’

  I don’t drink!

  I recommend very dark glasses, because eye contact is a killer. And when I get trapped with strange, annoying parents, things can get very ugly.

  CHAPTER 22

  FUN WHILE IT LASTED

  Dealing with brickbats

  One of the problems with sport is that everyone thinks they know best. You’ll have a football manager getting paid God knows how much money but the lad sitting in Wetherspoons on his 15th Guinness or the bloke driving a white van knows better. They honestly think they could manage Manchester United. What is wrong with these people? The lack of awareness beggars belief.

  I’d be batting, make a mistake, and people would jump all over me. I’d think, ‘Do you not think we practise? Do you really think I wanted to do that?’ One game against the West Indies at Lord’s, I went out to bat last over before lunch and Omari Banks, a spinner, was bowling. He was dreadful, but swanned around as if he owned the place, so I always wanted to smash him. He lobbed his first ball up and I launched him straight over his head for six. Before he’d even bowled the next ball I thought, ‘Whatever it is, I’ll just pat it back and play for lunch.’ He lobbed it up, same as the first ball, I should have launched him again, tried to block it instead, got in a muddle and was bowled.

  As I was walking up the steps of the pavilion, someone hit me over the head with a rolled-up newspaper and I heard this really posh voice behind me: ‘Fun while it lasted, Flintoff!’ I turned round with my fist cocked, ready to drop someone, and saw this little old man scuttling off through the door. In the end, I’d walk through the Long Room at Lord’s, on my way out to bat, letting big belches out, just to upset the old members in their MCC blazers and ties.

  In India, I was on the back of the bus on the way back from a match, after we’d been beaten again, desperate for a wee. Someone said, ‘Just piss out the back’, so I slid the window open, was doing a big wee and a tour coach went past, full of supporters. Not a Barmy Army tour coach, but a serious one, full of rich middle-class people staying in the finest hotels. When I arrived at the airport, all these supporters were coming up to me and telling me what a disgrace I was – not for weeing out the back of the bus, but for the shot I played to get out. I was thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, I was just weeing out the back of a bus, and you’re lecturing me about the shot I played? Weird’.

  If you’re buying a ticket or you have a Sky subscription, of course you’ve got the right to criticise. When I pay to watch a film, I’ll have an opinion about it, and I can say what I want. But I struggle when I hear people talking about things they know very little about. I’ll listen to people talking about the technicalities of cricket, when they’ve never played at anywhere near the highest level, and I’ll be bemused. More than anything else, I find it funny. I hate it when people say, ‘They didn’t want it enough’, or, ‘They wanted it more than them.’ Or they’ll speculate on a player’s state of mind when they have absolutely no idea what’s going on in that person’s head.

  If you play a shocking shot or you’re visibly fat or are hanging out of your arse, fine. But criticism of a player’s skills and techniques wouldn’t happen in any other business. Imagine if they made surgery a spectator sport and people crowded into an operating theatre to watch a kidney transplant. They wouldn’t all sit there going, ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t have done that, that’s all wrong. I would have removed that bit first…’ But in sport, everyone has an opinion, whether they’ve played that sport or not. It’s the strangest thing.

  I received untold stick after the Ashes Down Under in 2006–07, but everything was against us on that tour, from the very beginning. There was a team unveiling at the Oval, and I was selected with the rest of the team as captain, which meant I didn’t get to pick my squad. I was looking around at the lads and thinking, ‘I’m not sure I would have picked four or five of you.’ I didn’t get on with the coach, Duncan Fletcher. My best player, Marcus Trescothick, went home ill. Harmy’s head wasn’t right either, and I was injured and had no form.

  I’d do it again, simply because you can’t turn it down – on my CV, it says I was England captain – but, looked at another way, I was mad to accept it and should have trusted my instincts. Andrew Strauss had been doing a decent interim job and I knew deep down that my best role in the team was leading by performance and being a right-hand man to the captain.

  When it all went to shit and the Aussies were hammering us, I had to carry the can for it. I behaved inappropriately at times, and drank a bit too much, but they were symptoms of what was going on in the background. I’m quite happy to admit I wasn’t suited to the job, but it wasn’t just me to blame.

  I often say I was a terrible England skipper, but for a while I was quite good. In fact, I’ve had so many people tell me what a bad England captain I was, I’m now going to blow my own trumpet and say I was brilliant. We drew a series in India, hammered them in Mumbai, the first time we’d beaten them there in God knows how long, and I was named player of the series. At the time, everyone was going on about how the res
ponsibility of captaincy had brought the best out in me. I was tactically average, but I led a young team from the front and everyone bought into it. I gave one team-talk naked, before singing Johnny Cash’s ‘Ring of Fire’ and bowling India out. If you can’t be inspired by that, you’re in the wrong game! We then drew with Sri Lanka, and it was during that series that I got injured. Everything went downhill from there.

  We played like a team of herberts on that Ashes tour, and the biggest herbert was leading them. I can take bad performances, that just happens. People play poorly and there’s not much you can do about it. But after we lost in Perth, which meant we’d lost the Ashes after just three Tests, there was a chat in the dressing room over a few beers, and players were saying they could have done more to prepare for going on tour. I was thinking, ‘Hang on a minute, I’ve done everything I can to make the tour, we’ve been hammered, and now you’re telling me you could have done more?’ I’m not denying I got things wrong on that tour, I was far from blameless, but I had to carry the can for everyone. That annoyed me, and I can’t forgive some of those players for that.

  I tell you what is absolute bollocks, the notion of team spirit. The media are always going on about it, but it rarely exists. When everything is great, players are performing well and the team are winning, then people start claiming it’s all down to team spirit. But it’s got nothing to do with team spirit, it just means everyone is happy because everything is great, players are performing well and the team are winning. And it’s the same if you’re getting beaten – it’s got nothing to do with team spirit, it just means everyone has got the hump because you’re getting dicked on. The closest thing to team spirit I experienced was with Lancashire after my comeback from injury. I thought we had team spirit in 2005, but it soon evaporated when the team was tested and things started going wrong on the tour of Pakistan. In hindsight, that team that regained the Ashes in 2005 was just a bloody good team playing well.