According to the BBC Sport website, Australian captain Ricky Ponting, possibly the hairiest man to ever play cricket since Biffo the Bear, is surprised that Andrew Flintoff has been given the captains role for the upcoming Ashes series.

“I did think Strauss would get the nod. We will have to wait and see what sort of job Flintoff does,” said Ponting.

He also questions the inclusion of Ashley Giles and James Anderson due to their current injuries. 

In the same article the Pie Eater likens Andrew Strauss and Freddie to Laurel and Hardy.

“They remind me a bit of Laurel and Hardy - in that they are different characters who complement each other nicely.”
Shane Warne

Click here to read the BBC Sport article in full. 

The verbal battles have started and there’s still 70 days to go until the 1st Test! Fantastic! As I recall Old Man McGrath suggested that they would beat us 5-0 in the last series. Mind you, Hoggy suggested that McGrath was over the hill before the Lord’s test and look what happened then…

It’s all part of the psychology of cricket and I’m looking forward to reading the banter over the next few months and, of course, writing about it here

Tags : Andrew Flintoff, Ricky Ponting, Shane Warne, The Ashes, Cricket, England, Australia

There’s an interesting article in the Daily Mail today by Paul Hayward suggesting that giving the captaincy to Andrew Flintoff for the Ashes campaign might be overloading him. You can read the article in full here but I have to take issue with one of the points Hayward brings up which is that he thinks the selectors gave Freddie the job for fear that he might sulk if he didn’t get it.

Read more…

It’s only another 71 days until the 06/07 Ashes series kicks off in Brisbane. I watched the press conference on Sky yesterday and was obviously pleased to see Freddie made captain for the tour. It’s a bit harsh on Andrew Strauss after he’d led the side to a series victory over Pakistan but the selectors had always said Fred was the man if he was fit.

I’m not sure about the squad, to be honest. Personally I don’t rate Sajid Mahmood and I think that Cook is going to get found out in Australia but I’ll be more than happy to eat my words if we come back from Oz with The Ashes again.

Tags : Andrew Flintoff, The Ashes, Cricket, England, Australia

It’s a year to the day since I updated the old Flintoff’s Ashes website. Nursing a monstrous hangover after spending several hours in The Beehive next to The Oval, I managed to post some of the comments made by fellow drinkers in the pub after England’s victory in the 2005 Ashes series. I promised to write a match report on the Oval game within a couple of days and…ermm…didn’t

About a month later after the Ashes hangover had subsided, I started to write a match report but my heart wasn’t in it. Part of the fun of the old site was updating it each day with the latest drama and somehow it just didn’t feel right so the old site gathered dust for best part of a year.

Last month I decided to take the site down and put a For Sale sign up. However watching the recent series against Pakistan made me think seriously about putting the site back up again. After all, the next Ashes series starts in November. Freddie and the boys would be going back into action against Old Man McGrath and the Pie Eater again.

So here we are again! This time on a nice, new, shiny WordPress website which will allow not only me to update it daily but also other readers of the site. The new Flintoff’s Ashes website is more interactive and will hopefully provide some entertainment over the course of the winter as we take on the Old Enemy once more.

I’ll be tinkering with the site over the next week or two. I’ll be porting over the old Flintoff’s Ashes pages. Adding a few more features. Making it feel a bit more like home. If anyone wants to be a part of the site and write a few posts, feel free to drop me a line through the Contact page.

Spread the news, folks. Flintoff’s Ashes is back from the…ermm…Ashes!

Tags : Andrew Flintoff, The Ashes, Cricket, England, Australia, WordPress

Hey! We’re redeveloping the site at the moment…..Come back tomorrow!