Andrew Flintoff's unseemly attack on Michael Atherton's commentary credentials simply doesn't add up Until such day as this hectoring dystopia comes to pass, we will always have people talking about things that they themselves have not accomplished. And thank goodness. Although not himself a gorilla, Sir David Attenborough has nevertheless illuminated their lives for TV viewers. Under the Flintoff assessment, Sir Patrick Moore, who has shamefully never even left this planet, would be better off not running his yap about the stars until he has got himself up there in a spaceship. Or perhaps become a supernova. And maybe a credentials-based structure should be introduced for the criminal justice system as well, with burglars having a right to be tried by a jury of other housebreakers, Mr Justice Assault-and-Battery presiding. Flintoff's attack on Atherton follows Kevin Pietersen's on Nick Knight, a former player whom Pietersen felt had no place in the Sky commentary box for the Test series. The case of West Indies keeper-batsman Denesh Ramdin, who scored a century at Edgbaston and held up a note with a defiant message to his critic Sir Viv Richards, suggests that grievances against former players" opinions are not just an English concern. It also suggests hints at some sort of death wish on the part of the Trinidadian gloveman, but that's another story. It might be that Atherton's Test record doesn't place him too highly in the pantheon, but surely nobody should know better than Flintoff that statistics don't always tell the full story? As an all-rounder, Flintoff averaged more with the ball (32.78) than he did with the bat (31.77), and he took five wickets in an innings on just three occasions. Yet how often was his contribution greater than what was shown on the scorecard at the end of a day's play? In his blistering over to Ricky Ponting in 2005, with his 2009 run-out at The Oval, with his handshake for Brett Lee, he produced England cricket's most joyous moments since Botham. More than his runs and wickets, Flintoff played (on and off the field) with a lionhearted, irresistible enthusiasm that made him much loved by England cricket fans, and caught the imagination of people who had little previous interest in the game. Since retirement, he has slipped into an unlovely television career of laddish challenge shows where people attempt to eat 10 cream crackers in a minute while paragliding in the Gobi desert with nothing but Joe Pasquale for company. It seems a slightly undignified way for a sporting hero to make a living, and it's a further shame to attack Atherton for making his.