ANDREW Flintoff announced yesterday that he would apply for the post of England head coach once Trevor Bayliss’s contract expired in 2019.
Speaking on his podcast Flintoff, Savage and The Ping Pong Guy, England’s 2005 Ashes hero said he would put his name up for the job “if they want me to do it”.

“I’m talking with my heart, yes (I’ll apply), I want to do it one day,” said Flintoff.
Bayliss is set to step down at the conclusion of Australia’s Ashes tour of England and Wales in 2019, when his contract runs its term.

If Flintoff does apply, it will be the second time he would have thrown his hat in the ring. He had applied for the position in 2014 when Peter Moores was reappointed.
“We spoke about it (in 2014) and I was serious, but I had to think if I’d be better than the person they’re choosing,” he said. “I knew I wouldn’t be better than Peter Moores, so after a half an hour conversation I withdrew, but also said if Moores doesn’t get it, put me back in the hat.”

Flintoff also went on to reveal that a clerical error nearly cost him his initial interview with officials from the England and Wales Cricket Board.
“I thought that I would have a crack at this, I wrote an email, three weeks past and no reply. (I found out) the ECB thought it wasn’t me despite me having one email all my life.”

Flintoff became the poster boy of English cricket after inspiring his country to victory in the 2005 Ashes with a series of heroic performances with both bat and ball. However, injuries cut his international career short and he wore national colours for the final time in 2009, retiring at the end of that year’s Ashes series aged 31.

Flintoff has spoken openly about suffering from depression and acknowledged that he went through a period where he hated cricket after retiring from the sport.
It came as no surprise then that Flintoff said that he would, as a coach, emphasise on the mental side of the game rather than focus on skills.
“A coach’s job now is to get players feeling the best they can be to perform, as a coach or mentor, that’d be my greatest asset,” he said.

“When I look back now, I should’ve spent more time on my head, I spent all the time in the gym and practising, but I should’ve spent more time focusing on my mind.”
Speaking on the recently-concluded Ashes, which Australia won 4-0, Flintoff said: “For the first time in a long time, Australia have become Australia again, they were ruthless. England have gone back to England, back to the way they were in the 1990s, soft.”