Island race or not, we have not been doing at all well when putting out to sea in past weeks. First, in the benign setting of the Caribbean, the vice-captain and muscular icon of the England one-day cricket eleven, Freddie Flintoff, was sacked from the vice-captaincy, though not, for sure, from his iconicity, for having had a great deal too much to drink before driving a pedalo out into the local waters in the middle of the night and then capsizing it; something which I'd have thought was beyond even a man as large and as heavy as Flintoff, so reassuringly stable did pedalos always seem when we far frailer pedallers sat in them. The England players in the World Cup have performed very poorly, and if they have to come home having failed to do anything in the least commendable out on the pitch, then Flintoff's sottish buffoonery will be the one ranking memory of our participation in that tournament.

LRB 26 April 2007 | PDF Download