WELL, here's something I got completely wrong. For years, I have maintained that Ian Botham would be the last English cricketer who was a household name.

The Ashes series he set alight in 1981 made him the celebrity he remains today. His heroics checked the steady decline in cricket's popularity. But the game's slide resumed within a season or two.

Now, however, we have Freddie Flintoff, the new Botham, key man in the current, gripping Ashes series. Few haven't heard of him, and his image is popularly touted as a choice to appear on Britain's new coins.

Amazing. But will this second rekindling of interest in our struggling summer game prove any more permanent than the first?

Should it do so, Flintoff and Co will have achieved a triumph greater than wrenching the Ashes back from the Aussies. They will have overcome the monumental shortsightedness of the English and Welsh Cricket Board, guardians of the game.

From next season, Test cricket will disappear from terrestrial TV. This meets the wishes of the EWCB, which campaigned to have Test matches removed from sport's crown jewels, top events like Wimbledon and the FA Cup final, that must be shown on free-to-view TV.

The almost fever of interest in the current Ashes series shows that top class cricket can still capture the public's imagination without coloured clothing, floodlights or contrived fielding arrangements. But unless it is visible it stands no chance. The EWCB might well find that its £200m from Sky TV, officially for an exclusive TV deal, turns out to cover the cost of cricket's funeral.

A more profound cricket tragedy was the death during a game at Swainby, near Stokesley, last weekend, probably from a heart attack, of the home team captain, 68-year-old George Clemmit.

Forty years ago, for a different village club, George and I were teammates. "Purposeful" describes George. His purpose - to win, from whatever position.

The first time I saw him bat he went in in near darkness when we still needed a bagful. Amid the dim, encircling hills at Kildale, George got 'em, cleanly clipping the ball here and there and running up and down like a ferret.

Even in his sleep, George was probably on the lookout for quick singles and any chance to turn a two into a three. If the Celestial XI wants a player who believes in getting on with it and gives no quarter, George is, literally, heaven sent. To his wife, Ada, his family and present cricket colleagues, I offer my sympathy.

THE hit song You're Beautiful, a lyrical piece sung by James Blunt, about a beautiful woman glimpsed on a subway, has prompted speculation about its origin.

Perhaps Blunt, or the song's writer, Amanda Ghost, likes Thomas Hardy. In his poem Faint Heart on a Railway Train, he expresses his urge to get off to meet a "radiant stranger" spotted on a platform. "But I kept my seat... O could it but be that I had alighted there."

In another poem, A Thunderstorm in Town, Hardy recalls being cooped up with a pretty woman, "in the hansom's dry recess" while the vehicle waited for a storm to pass. "I should have kissed her if the rain had lasted a minute more." Just as well it passed swiftly then.