Wherever Andrew Flintoff is now on the graph of his cricketing prowess, he is hard at work in the thoughts of Australia's players, spreading doubt, stoking memories of 2005, reviving an old baggy green wish that he had been born an Antipodean instead of a Lancastrian scamp.
Limping home from England four summers ago, Ricky Ponting reflected: "It would be nice if we could find an Andrew Flintoff from somewhere." Talk to Ponting's current squad and they all speak of "Fred" far more than Kevin Pietersen, England's other lethal weapon. As with Ian Botham, his spiritual sire, Flintoff is seen by Punter's men as an Australian born on an English maternity ward by mistake.
The most compelling individual sub-plot to the coming marathon is whether Flintoff still has it in him to be the wrecker of Aussie hopes. After four ankle operations, and one in his knee following an ill-starred cameo in the Indian Premier League, the imagination's dark parts see him carted out of this series on a stretcher. If he survives through to The Oval, he will haunt Australia's batsmen and bowlers through sheer force of personality as well as the brutish power of his physique.
To them, Pietersen is an extravagant run-maker they need to get out pronto. A problem, yes, but not a whole rash of complex challenges, as Flintoff is. They know Pietersen is semi-detached in this England camp. He could never embody English cricket's ploughman spirit, nor hold the side together in adversity, except through weight of runs. Flintoff can do both. He is a country charging in to bowl, a culture brandishing a bat. To attack him is to poke the beehive of his nature, which survives the ravages of injuries and calls to the night porter to keep on coming with the trays of drinks.
"I like Andrew Flintoff. To me he's the stand-out player," says Michael Clarke, Australia's vice-captain. "He's the player who, if he's 100%, could have the biggest impact for England. He's not only an amazing bowler who can bowl 140kph for a long period, the way he plays the game, he's so competitive on the field, and a wonderful guy off it. He can turn a game like that [Clarke clicks his fingers] with the bat.
"In 2005 and then in Australia I spent a little bit of time off the field with him. He never stops trying, runs in hard all day. And I think he's a really nice fellah." This extended reverence is common in the Australian set-up, and not just because Flintoff knelt down to console Brett Lee in that famous denouement to the Edgbaston Test. Maybe it is not the threat Flintoff poses so much as the perception of it that marks him as Australian enemy No1.
His Ashes story is an overload of boy's own heroism, pie-eyed revelry, hubris (his desire to be captain in 2006-07 ahead of Andrew Strauss), disastrous leadership Down Under and, most recently, the excruciating missed bus ride to Ypres as the country was observing Armed Forces Day. Nothing could have been better framed to offend middle England than their best cricketer sleeping in when he was due to pay his respects at the graves of men from backgrounds like his who were butchered in the first world war.
Offending the majority is generally no bad thing, but not like this, even if the visit was faintly contrived: a rather self-conscious echo of the Steve Waugh generation's stop-off at Gallipoli. The suspicion reared up once more that Flintoff's love of booze and the conviviality it facilitates outweighs his desire to maximise his gifts. At the very least, it left the captain Andrew Strauss to answer tough questions about time-keeping, discipline and alcohol a week before a first Ashes Test.
Nearly drowning on a pedalo at 4am off St Lucia after England had lost a 2007 World Cup match also earned the great euphemistic tag of "distraction", and not even his closest drinking buddies can have banged their tankards approvingly when Duncan Fletcher alleged in his memoirs that Flintoff had turned up to a training session in Sydney on the disastrous 2006-07 tour still sloshed after staying out with Botham until 7am.
Still, when you consider that Merv Hughes is a national selector for an Australia Cricket Board that tells its players not to sledge, you see that Ashes cricket has always been a mass of contradictions. Since the 1970s it has been a funhouse for wild-men and mavericks. The work-hard, play-hard ethic is no contrivance, as Flintoff demonstrated so ably in 2005 by swaying into 10 Downing Street after a 17-hour glug-up.
He ought to have staggered back out as Minister for Beating Australia, because they fear him still.
