Andrew Flintoff calls on former players to back Alastair Cook and Peter Moores

Former Ashes winner says England coach is 'an amazing bloke'

Andrew Flintoff said one thing he got right was to pick Alastair Cook in his first Test as England captain (Getty)

Andrew Flintoff has defended the under-fire England captain, Alastair Cook, and the head coach, Peter Moores, and accused some former players now employed as pundits of taking “cheap shots” when they should be showing support for them.

The former Ashes winner said: “Peter Moores – there aren’t enough words for me to describe how great he is as a person and coach. He’s an amazing bloke.

“And Alastair is one of England’s finest ever players. I got a lot of things wrong as England captain, but one thing I got right was picking Alastair Cook.

“If you have a career spanning more than 100 Test matches, there are going to be blips along the way. I’d like to see people outside the England team backing the lad.”

Since Moores was reappointed for his second stint in May last year England have won a home Test series against a tepid India but lost four one-day series and were humiliated at the World Cup.

Should they not win the current series in the West Indies and then fail against New Zealand at home, he may find himself out of a job by the time this summer’s Ashes series begins.

Cook, who made his Test debut in Flintoff’s first match as England captain in 2006, is without a Test century since 2013 and failed in both innings in the first Test in Antigua.

Flintoff, speaking at the launch of this year’s NatWest Blast T20 in Birmingham, said the former England players now employed in the media should be more supportive.

“It’s very easy to take cheap shots and swipes,” he said. “I think sometimes as a pundit, ex-player, you forget how difficult it can be. It’s time we started getting behind Cook, Moores, the players.”

Flintoff doubts Kevin Pietersen will play a part in England’s future despite returning to county cricket in the hope of regaining his Test place.

“If he’d started the season last year with Surrey and scored run after run, then maybe,” Flintoff said. “But he’s looking at the Ashes, which means [current players] have got to do something bad and he’s got to do something good. I think he’s just running out of time.”

Flintoff, who came out of retirement to make his own comeback with Lancashire last year and was part of the side beaten by Birmingham Bears in the NatWest Blast final, does not yet know if he will play again this summer.

He subsequently represented Brisbane Heat in Australia’s T20 Big Bash, the success of which prompted calls for a mid-summer English Premier League, possibly based on new city franchises rather than the counties.

But Flintoff believes there is little wrong with T20 in this country as it stands and fears for counties who might be marginalised in a city-based tournament.

“In this country we always look at things abroad and say everything is better. But this year the competition [here] gets even stronger, we’re seeing that with some of the players coming over – the world’s best, Chris Gayle, Brendon McCullum, Glenn Maxwell, Aaron Finch.

“I don’t see it as the poor relation of the IPL [Indian Premier League] and having played in the Big Bash I didn’t see anything that made me think, ‘this is far better than what we’ve got at home’.

“The Big Bash worked well in Australia. But there are all these counties in England, where people support T20 and get behind their team, and I wouldn’t want to knock on someone’s door and say ‘hang on a minute, you’re not in it this year’.”

Worcestershire’s captain, Daryl Mitchell, worries that his county could be one of those left on the outside.

“If we did go in that direction and there was no cricket at the best time of the summer at New Road and places like Hove and Taunton, it would be very sad,” he said. “There will have to be something in place to make sure that the counties benefit as well.”