Yesterday’s 115-run Ashes win over Australia lay to rest that ghost and was as wildly celebrated as the famous day in June 1934.
The heroes though could hardly have been more different.
Hedley Verity captained England that day, taking an extraordinary 15 wickets to see off an Australia team featuring the great Don Bradman. Verity was a modest, scholarly man, a left arm spinner who went on to be a war hero, dying at the hands of the Germans.
By stark contrast England have rarely had such a rumbustious talisman than Flintoff; the embodiment of charisma and a man known as much for his off-field troubles as his ability to tear apart test teams with bat and ball.
Derek Hodgson, 79, a cricket historian and former president of the Cricket Writers’ Club, said that Flintoff had yet to achieve Verity’s greatness.
He said: “I could not imagine Freddie becoming a captain in the armed forces. A sergeant maybe, but nothing higher as his sympathies would always have been with the rank and file soldiers. Verity was always the officer type.
“Verity was well-liked, but he was schoolmastery. You could almost imagine him as a university professor if he had survived the war. He may have had a couple of drinks after a match but you never heard of him getting up to anything with pedalos.”
Lauded from the day he made his debut for Lancashire in 1997, aged 17, Flintoff’s natural talent was undermined by issues of weight, motivation and his joie de vivre.
But in 2005 he led England to glory in the Ashes, scoring 402 runs and taking 24 wickets in five Tests, catapulting him to global superstardom.
Destructive on the pitch, he has been equally self-destructive off it. In 2007 he was sacked as England vice-captain during the World Cup after a long drinking session in the wake of defeat against New Zealand saw him falling of a pedalo in the early hours and having to be rescued from the water.
Only three weeks ago he was disciplined for failing to show up for a team-building coach trip to the World War One trenches at Ypres ahead of the Ashes. Speculation was rife that he had missed the bus after drinking too much at the team dinner the night before.
It is behaviour Verity would never have countenanced, on or off the pitch. Not for him the grandstanding, revelling in the glory of a wicket. A handshake would have sufficed.
“I doubt that the MCC members would even have risen to their feet for him,” said Mr Hodgson. “It would take something like a Bradman triple-century to warrant a standing ovation.”
Verity would prepare himself for an Ashes Test with an extra bowl of strawberries. By contrast, on winning the Ashes in 2005, Flintoff went on the razzle. When asked the following morning whether he had eaten anything he replied: “Yes. A cigar.”
Verity, who played for Lancashire’s great rivals, Yorkshire, waited until he was 25 to make his debut for his county, but his arrival in the game sparked a similar furore to Flintoff’s.
He played 40 Test matches for England between 1931 and 1939. In the Lord’s game he took 15 for 104, including 14 wickets in one day.
On 1 September, 1939, the last day of county cricket before World War II, he took seven wickets for nine runs as Yorkshire thrashed Sussex at Hove.
Upon the outbreak of war, Verity joined the army and in 1943, having been promoted to the rank of captain, he was wounded during the Eighth Army's advance on Catania and taken prisoner by the Germans.
After being transferred into Italian hands, he died at Caserta a few days later from his wounds, aged 38.
He still holds the best first-class figures in history, 10 for 10 against Nottinghamshire in 1932.
Alan Hill, who wrote Verity’s biography, said both men were great patriots but lived very different lifestyles.
He said: “Hedley was from a church going family. His father once won a bottle of wine in a raffle but his mother took it immediately and poured it down the drain.
"He was devout in his cricket and devout in his quest to make himself a soldier. I think the Christian ethic was definitely in his blood."
In 2007, 66 years after he died, Verity became the 7th cricketer to be elected into Yorkshire County Cricket Club's 'Hall of Fame'.
Across the Pennines, Flintoff will hope he doesn’t have to wait as long for similar recognition.
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