Don't hurl brickbats at Flintoff

There once was a time when the decision that Andrew Flintoff has just reached, even coming in the twilight of his career, would have been greeted with outrage and ostracism. After all, Tony Greig's reputation never recovered from his "defection" to World Series Cricket, and even luminaries such as Alan Knott and Derek Underwood were criticised for putting money ahead of the greater glory of the game - despite the fact that they had previously been paid peanuts for the privilege of a career in sport.

But there should be no such brickbats lobbed in Flintoff's direction this time around. Cricket has changed immeasurably in the three decades since professionalism took a proper hold, and one look at the sorry non-event taking place in autumnal England right now will confirm that the pursuit of money is the over-riding ambition of everyone involved - boards and players alike.

Had he been fit to play on after the Ashes, Flintoff would have recognised, better than the employers that he has just snubbed, the nonsensical logic of flogging his tired body through seven meaningless, meandering one-day internationals only days after the conclusion of one of the most intensely contested campaigns of recent times.

"At this stage of my career I don't think I need to be told when to play and when to rest," said Flintoff in an official statement explaining his decision. "I am 31, I have played international cricket for 11 years and know my body's capabilities".

Flintoff finished this summer's Ashes on his knees in the physical sense, with his career-prolonging operation taking place barely 24 hours after the Oval finale, but many of his colleagues were every bit as mentally floored, as their subsequent travails have clearly demonstrated. The current ODI series is precisely the type of pointless enterprise to which Flintoff, in his new freelance capacity, will now be able to say to the ECB: "Thanks but no thanks." And it's just possible that the game will be all the better for it.

Not in the short-term, admittedly. There is nothing remotely gratifying about the rebellion that is brewing in world cricket, with the intractable West Indian contract dispute being the most visible and volatile area of dissatisfaction. But ultimately the international game will have to react to this new wave of player power, just as it did in the days of Kerry Packer, when better pay and better conditions were the only viable options. And this time around, the best and most logical solution is to play less international cricket, to ensure that every Test, ODI (if the format survives the upheaval) and T20I is an event that demands to be savoured.

The potential ramifications of Flintoff's decision should not be under-estimated. Cricinfo understands that he has already been given a No-Objection Certificate to take part in the whole of next season's IPL, and while that may simply be a farewell gift to a player on the wane, it is a precedent that fellow stars such as Kevin Pietersen will eye up with understandable envy. Next February's tour of Bangladesh, an entirely unloved adjunct of the Future Tours Programme, could become the first international campaign ever to be used as a warm-up act for a domestic tournament.

That, however, is more a comment on the worthlessness of Bangladesh as international opponents than the worthlessness of international cricket per se, because funnily enough, the IPL - a competition that is regarded by some as the enemy of the international game - seems to recognise, at least on the face of it, the value of country v country cricket better than most of the participating nations.

It was, after all, the success of India as a nation in the 2007 World Twenty20 that gave the IPL its raison d'etre; more recently, Lalit Modi, the IPL commissioner, quashed Brendon McCullum's attempt to refuse his New Zealand contract by tightening a loophole in his competition's regulations regarding the issuing of NOCs. Henceforth, nobody will be permitted to go freelance (or "retire") without the say-so of their home board. But as the West Indies players have shown by withdrawing their labour from the WICB, that position is only the starting point for the bargaining that is sure to ensue.

At his post-Ashes press conference on the day after the Oval victory, Flintoff was asked whether he had been enough of a "bastard" during his playing days, the point being that a bit more ruthlessness - in pursuit of centuries, five-wicket hauls and his own pursuit of greatness - could have reaped exponential rewards. "Better late than never" is the message he is now spelling out. While the ECB have footed the bill for Flintoff's rehab, in particular by paying the costs for his personal physio, Dave Roberts, it can hardly be claimed that he owes his old employers an outstanding debt of gratitude. In fact, the opposite is every bit as true.

Ever since he transformed his attitude at the start of the 2003 summer, Flintoff has been the board's most marketable personality and the heartbeat that pumped the team through its most successful era for five decades, up to and including the 2005 Ashes. And Flintoff himself knows it, because he has belatedly recognised his own worth. Compared to his spontaneity in 2005, his Kodak moments during the 2009 Ashes were contrived to the point of self-parody - most notably his down-on-one-knee celebration at Lord's - but billboards don't care about context.

There was nothing contrived, however, about the heart-on-sleeve endeavours that led to those bouts of posing, and it is clearly not his fault that the feelgood factor that he helped to generate this summer has been squandered by greed and daft scheduling. And England will doubtless intend to select him in limited-overs cricket wherever the opportunity next arises - their looming 7-0 whitewash shows just how hopeless they are without him.

Not surprisingly, Flintoff's rejection has significant implications for the ECB's contracts system as well. For five years from their inception in 2000, they were the best thing that has ever happened to English cricket, because they provided job security and consequently a forging of a team ethos. But since 2005, their worth has been freefalling, with the suspicion that the recipients belong in a "cosy club" - not least some of those named on the 2009-10 list.

But there are new opportunities out there now, and Flintoff is setting out to pursue them. And while Pietersen may be the only man in the England dressing-room with the clout to take a similar route, the megastars contracted to the game's other governing bodies - McCullum, Chris Gayle and Brett Lee to name but a handful - will watch him go with huge interest. Cricket's future will be shaped by the players who choose to leap from their comfortably-feathered nests, a situation of which Packer himself would surely approve.