The lost greats

Samir Chopra has poured cold water over the idea that Andrew Flintoff's name should be added to the roll of great cricketers. He is of course right, but it is nevertheless significant that the question should even be worth discussing. When Paul Collingwood retires, for instance, any English paper bandying "great" around will also be carrying reports of the Pope's conversion to Scientology and its travel supplement will be featuring a guide to the exciting new ski resorts in hell.

Ricky Ponting has compared Flintoff to Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh and Wasim Akram, Justin Langer rates him as one of the three best bowlers he's faced, and Adam Gilchrist has confessed to having nightmares about him. Michael Holding rated his spell on the fifth morning at Lord's as one of the greatest spells of fast bowling he had seen. His dismantling of Jaques Kallis was one of the indelible memories of last summer. These are not the memories of, nor tributes paid to, the journeyman bits-and-pieces player Flintoff's statistics seem to betoken, but ticks in several of the boxes on the application for membership of Great Players CC. Too few to qualify, but enough for him not to be dismissed out of hand.

Flintoff is one of those poignant characters discussion of whose career will usually include the words "if only", the ones we might call the lost greats. Whether because of early death (Archie Jackson, Collie Smith, Duleepsinhji) or apartheid bans (Barry Richards, Mike Procter, Sylvester Clarke, Franklyn Stephenson) or other causes over which they had little personal control, we cannot help wondering what we would have thought of them if only they had had uninterrupted careers.

Michael Vaughan might have found the captaincy which consumed his mental energy a somewhat lesser burden after the triumph of the 2005 Ashes and reacquired the form which had propelled him to the number one ranking three years previously, but he quickly injured his knee and never really returned to full fitness. He doesn't qualify for GPCC either, but those who remember his sublime batting in 2002 and 2003 cannot but wonder what might have been.

Since he has never managed to play a Test against England, my opportunities to watch Shane Bond bowl have been very limited, so I am more reliant on statistics and hearsay than on personal observation, but if only his fitness had been more robust, surely there would now be arguments over whether he or Richard Hadlee occupies the number one spot in the history of Black Cap bowling.

Then there is the amazing saga of Shoaib Akhtar. If Flintoff can be held partly responsible for his own downfall, Shoaib gets twice as much blame. Sometimes he has been allegedly fit but has not turned up, sometimes he has turned up when obviously unfit, and at other times he has just been at loggerheads with the PCB, but seeing him charge in when he does play, his jet-black hair flopping around in an echo of Fred Trueman, has been one of the biggest thrills of the last decade or so.

No doubt, if all four had had continuous careers, one or more would eventually have fallen short of greatness, but all of them possessed a magic which lifted them above the common herd. But while we deny them the ultimate accolade, we should also acknowledge they have enriched the game in ways that those who were never candidates for greatness could not dream of doing.

Who else belongs on the list of lost greats? Academic though the question is, wistful nostalgia has always been an essential part of cricket chinwags, so I look forward to reading your nominations.