The age of touchline ridicule really dawned in the 1970s, when the Hell's Angel team of Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee were cheered by Australians who carried their own weight in lager into grounds. The heirs to that sideburned gang are better stewarded but they can still find a Pom to taunt. "Freddie's on the piss again," was their anthem whenever Andrew Flintoff went near the ball.
The imprecations kept on rolling from those in green and gold, to the exclusion of all bar Stuart Broad, whose supposed resemblance to "a lady" featured in the day's other most popular antipodean lyric. Cans and cups of ale were offered over the barriers when Flintoff approached the ropes at the Cathedral Road end. The English response was a constant recitation of love for one of the country's favourite carousers. Yes: the test of star quality is still whether you can divide a whole stadium.
Flintoff is the Ashes in single human form. The story flows right through him the way the Taff streams through Cardiff. Right on cue on the second day of this first Test he supplied the lone English breakthrough when bowling Phillip Hughes into submission. Australia's unorthodox 20-year-old opener was intent on cutting England's attack to ribbons. Flintoff spotted an opportunity to put a prodigy back in his box and thus atone for his insensitivity in missing the bus the England team had booked for an 8am trip to first world war graves at Ypres.
Crowd obsessions develop around players the crowd can most easily identify with. Flintoff is the big strong English patriot who scares foreigners and likes his pint. Those traits are loved and loathed by Australians, who think they have found a weakness to exploit. The thrust of their taunting was that Flintoff would have been up, showered and shaved by 7.45am had England been motoring to a brewery instead.
His fans consider it unthinkable that Flintoff could ever be dropped for abusing team principles. But the word is that his latest misdemeanour has taken him pretty close to purdah. Before Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss were promoted to coach and captain, England were in chaos. Discipline was the chosen path out of disunity. So there was no escaping the scale of Flintoff's challenge to the new regime's authority when he slept through an alarm the morning after a team dinner.
The Ashes are a siren, not a beeping telephone, and he was pumped and primed when Strauss threw him the ball to break the Hughes-Simon Katich partnership. The hulk obliged. The first great duel of this series featured snorting run-ups, bouncers, evil stares, sarcastic smiles and a brutal trial of Hughes' backward-shuffling technique, not to mention his intestinal fortitude.
England knew Hughes would apply flashing speed and instinctive skill to deliveries wide of the off-stump. Their first mission was to send the boy back to school. Flintoff had him bouncing on his haunches and swaying away from 94mph bullets. The new Matthew Hayden stood his ground until his tormentor forced an inside edge that flew to Matt Prior. Flintoff perfected his new celebratory stance: dead still, with both arms raised and straight, like a man being pulled into the sky.
There we were, back in the 2005 comic strip. Fearless Fred had re-emerged from his captaincy meltdown Down Under, his booze-related mishaps and endless surgery to sweep Australia's batsmen away. He was like a threshing machine, magically switched on by the sight of a baggy green cap. There was such pace and venom in his initial six-over spell that Stuart Broad was transformed at the other end. Inspired by Flintoff's aggression, Broad went on the offensive, briefly. England welcomed Ricky Ponting to the battleground confident that their first innings total of 435 was a decent fortress to defend.
It was vain hope. Five hours later Ponting was returning to the pavilion 100 not out and Katich had struck 104 in Australia's 249 for one. The nine overs Flintoff bowled after the six he used to outwit Hughes lacked the spite and bounce of his initial, thrilling contribution. The pitch had lost its zip. England's most consistently lethal quick from four years ago brought the attack to life and then watched impotently as it went back to sleep, a recurring theme from his trip to Belgium.
His 15 overs cost only 48 runs and his line and length after the Hughes dismissal were those of a solid citizen. But to see England's threat with the ball evaporate at 60 for one on a pitch suited to their two spinners was a psychological setback that may weigh heavily on an Ashes-callow attack. Until today all the talk had been of Ponting's lack of faith in Nathan Hauritz and the long spells in which Australia's captain had supposedly failed to apply sufficient pressure to England's first innings.
Strauss's worst night-time vision would have been two of Australia's most senior batsmen scoring 204 between them without loss, and neither Graeme Swann nor Monty Panesar being able to capitalise on Flintoff's expert attack on Hughes. Knocking over an opener only just out of his teenage years was a nice prize but it failed to translate against the more experienced Ponting and Katich.
Flintoff's undercard fight with the new Aussie star could not tell us whether his best bowling will arrive in sustained passages or briefly effective bursts. England need it to keep on coming. Does adrenalin, like alcohol, deceive with its power to excite and animate? Can his body still carry his English heart? He needs a thick skin, that much we know. "Row, row, row your boat," the Australians sang, reprising the Fredalo capsizing incident. A figure of fear, a figure of fun.
