Without recourse to valour or drama, with no shades of character, no tales of stirring deeds, no room for circumstance, numbers end up telling the story of a cricketer pretty well. A player might have had his fifteen minutes of fame, and words can do justice to the deed, but over a lengthy career, good players produce good numbers. And so it is with numbers that one must judge Andrew Flintoff for those will not change even as legend grows.

Occasionally numbers might falter but they rarely fail if you are comparing like for like. Batsmen who played on uncovered pitches might have lesser numbers than those that played on pitches that were tended to with the kind of love afforded to spoilt children. Opening batsmen who played in the glory days of fast bowling might want to look at numbers a bit differently from those that play in the one bouncer per over era where anything over 140 kmph is considered fast. That is why it is often best to assess players in the milieu they played in. And that is why Flintoff must be compared to his peers, not to the Bothams or Imrans whose class he probably wasn’t in anyway.

In terms of respect among peers, always worthwhile to know, Flintoff rated as high as anyone of his era. When he was in form it seemed his averages belonged to someone else, when he steamed in and landed a fit ankle onto the turf, he could lay claim to being the world’s best on most days. But the truly great sustain performances, they routinely challenge perceptions, they battle poor form and ride the days when things go right. Flintoff will be remembered in Test cricket, since he will still remain a limited overs cricketer, as someone who had his moments, as someone who could be a match winner but who didn’t always deliver. Certainly by numbers alone, he wasn’t the leading all-rounder of his era. That role must belong to two South Africans, the only country in modern times that has consistently thrown up players with multiple skills.

... contd.