Former England all-rounder Andrew Flintoff performed phenomenally with both the bat and ball during his cricketing days to finish as one of the best all-rounders on the English soil.
Recently, Flintoff had a conversation with former Pakistan speedster Shoaib Akhtar during a podcast for talkSPORT, where the Englishman showered rich praise on Wasim Akram, calling the legendary pacer one of his heroes from whom he drew inspiration during his playing days.
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The former all-rounder further recalled the privilege of playing alongside Akram for Lancashire in county cricket when he was 16 and the Pakistani pace legend had taken him under his wing and Flintoff got to learn the art of getting the ball to reverse.
Crediting Akram for playing an influential role on his bowling, Flintoff revealed that he used to field at slip when the legendary bowler was bowling and that he used to pick up all those tips of reverse swing and thumb positions, saying the latter had a “massive part in my career.”
Flintoff was quoted as saying in Talk Sport’s podcast, “I played with Wasim Akram at Lancashire when I was 16 years of age. He was one of my heroes and someone I looked up to so much.”
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The Englishman continued, “Wasim took me under his wing. I used to pick up all these tips of reverse swing and thumb positions. I think my action also landed itself towards reverse swing as well. Wasim had a massive part in my career.”
Noteworthy, Flintoff played 79 Tests, 141 ODIs and seven T20Is in his career spanned 11 years from 1998 to 2009 for England and went on to score 3,845, 3,394 and 76 runs respectively with total of 400 wickets with 17 four-wicket hauls across the formats.
Meanwhile, Akhtar also shared his experience of playing against Flintoff, adding: “We learned about Flintoff through Wasim Akram, when he was playing for Manchester as he was talking about this young kid, who was highly talented and the next Ian Botham of England.”
He signed off by saying, “I finally saw him in Sharjah, in 1998 I think, where he hit Saqlain [Mushtaq] for massive sixes which scared me. We realized that this guy is powerful and multi-talented. He was a great competitor and could win matches for England single-handedly. We thoroughly enjoyed playing against him.”
(With Geo Super Inputs)
