Andrew Flintoff opens up about injury and Test cricket

English cricket hero Andrew Flintoff tells the Guardian today that the knee injury which has forced him to quit Test cricket and to sit out almost a full year of the shorter form of the game has been so debilitating that he has been reduced to asking his wife Rachael to put on his socks for him.

"That happened quite a few times," he says, "and that’s why I think differently when people look at my Test career and say, if not for injury, I could have done X, Y or Z. For me, a big achievement was just actually getting out on a cricket field." Flintoff’s last action in Tests was to help bring the Ashes back to England during the summer’s 2-1 series win over Australia - a reflex run-out by Flintoff of Aussie skipper Ricky Ponting essentially ending the tourists’ chances on the fourth day of the final Test at the Oval.

Flintoff reveals to Donald Macrae that pretty much all the time he played Test cricket he was in pain, and that to play as much as he did was an achievement in itself. "I don’t think, ‘I missed this amount of Test cricket for England.’ I just look back and I’m thankful I played that many Tests [79]. I’ve had six operations in four-and-a-half years - and two-and-a-half of those years were in rehab. I’ve been injured since I was 13. I had back problems all the way through. Even when I made my Test debut, I was in pain."

The all-rounder talks about his lowest moments in cricket, the drunken escapade with a pedalo that saw him banned during the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies ("horrendous") and captaining England to a crushing 5-0 series defeat in Australia in the 2006-07 Ashes series.

"[It was Christmas Eve], we’d just lost the Ashes in Perth, and I’m staring down the barrel at 5-0. I bought all this pressure on me because I wanted to do so well and I couldn’t do anything to stop it," the emotional 31-year-old says. "At that point it was safe to say it to my family. I just broke down."

Flintoff also reveals his regret at not being part of the England squad that goes to South Africa to take on the unofficial world champions for a hard and gruelling Test series this winter. "It’s going to be hard because it will hit home that I’m not playing Test cricket any more. It’s one thing sitting here and talking about it. It’ll be something else when the toss goes up and the sides walk out and I’m on the couch, or watching it in the gym. That’ll be the moment I realise a part of my life has gone."