Will Flintoff answer the higher call?

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If Flintoff pushes back the odds, as he did at Lord's, and makes a match-winning contribution it will be an achievement of a dazzling order, something to put alongside the feats of the man with whom he has been compared for so much of his career, Sir Ian Botham. That is the tantalising prospect as the time of today's action draws near. But of course there is the other one, not tantalising but nightmarish – the possibility of Flintoff the hero becoming the passenger, the man whose dreams eventually, and perhaps inevitably, went beyond any reasonable prospect of further support from an overstretched body.
“It crept up on us in 2005. We were on a roll, but looking back I think we were quite naive and didn’t really know what to expect. This time we’ve been preparing for it and it’s something I’ve been working towards. With all the injuries and having been hammered in Australia in the meantime, it would mean far more this time.”
This series is so close in terms of sessions, as I have written here before, but the indications are that Australia, because of their efforts towards the end at Edgbaston, still have the edge. Do not forget that in the shortened game the margins for error were heightened for both sides.
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It is perfectly simple for me: no Flintoff, no Ashes.
Siddhartha Talya is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo