There is too much on Andrew Flintoff's plate © Getty Images

The team with four bowlers took 20 wickets. The team with five bowlers took only 10 wickets, one of them a run-out. England had one more bowler than in their last series – a world-class one, Andrew Flintoff – yet they bowled decidedly worse. While the batsmen found their feet by the end of the match, the bowlers remained lost.

Flintoff was England’s best bowler by a mile, but that doesn’t mean his role should go unexamined. When a players is given three jobs, something has to give. With England’s last two allrounder captains, Ian Botham in 1980 and Alec Stewart in 1998-99, it was the batting that suffered. Botham kept on trying to do everything, won no Tests, and resigned after a year; Stewart gave up the wicketkeeping gloves after three Tests, found some batting form, and was sacked all the same, two Tests (and one botched World Cup) later.

Flintoff is being asked to be a top-six batsman, the main strike bowler, and the captain. For the first ball of this match, he also found himself keeping wicket. It’s just too much. As the bowling is so ropey, that has to be his main suit. On the past two years’ form, he was already a bowling allrounder, and now that is even more true.

A Cricinfo reader called Toby posted a comment over the weekend, saying (about six times): “Flintoff is not good enough to bat at six”. Toby is on to something. “Not good enough” is overstating it, because Flintoff has made several hundreds there, including a match-winning one against Australia. But substitute “not good enough” with “too stretched” and the point has some force. Flintoff played a tired shot in the first innings and a rash one in the second. He needs a licence to be rash, and it was a sign of his mental strength that he wasn’t inhibited by the captaincy. But the performance didn’t add up to that of a no.6.

	© Getty Images

There are no new boys
Normally England take an apprentice to Australia – Bob Willis in 1970-71, Phil DeFreitas in 1986-87. But they have had so many injuries this year that boys who might have been new have already got through their first couple of terms. Alastair Cook, Liam Plunkett and Saj Mahmood were all left out of the original Test squad for Pakistan a year ago, and they now have 20 caps between them. It’s still an inexperienced squad, but at least every member knows how it feels to have Test cricket running through his veins.

England have improved since the Ashes…
… in three areas, at least: middle-order batting (nobody is as green now as Ian Bell was then), wicketkeeping (Read is an artist, Jones a journeyman) and slow bowling (same with Panesar and Giles). On the other hand, they have gone backwards in four areas: captaincy (no Vaughan), fast bowling (no Simon Jones), tail-end batting (no journeymen), and fitness (six crocks, rising to seven today if Hoggard’s MRI scan goes badly). Time will tell whether the three areas are more significant than the four, or whether they can turn a couple of them round; their record on that is pretty good.

The Aussies are swaggering again
They are hot favourites at all the bookies. Glenn McGrath is making extravagant claims, saying he is bowling faster than ever at the age of 36. And all over Australia, cricket lovers are firing off wildly bullish emails to unsuspecting bloggers. The talk is of 4-1, as if it was still 2002. The Aussies could go into this Ashes series with just the same blithe over-confidence as the last one.

	'Andrew Flintoff has captained in India, the only place close to being as tough as Australia' © Getty Images

Tomorrow the England selectors sit down, for the first time in 20 years, to pick a tour party to retain the Ashes. Even with all the injuries, most of the 16 pick themselves – Strauss, Cook, Pietersen, Collingwood, Bell, Flintoff, Read, Hoggard, Harmison and Panesar are certainties. The other six places are the ones that will dominate the conversation. Here are the dilemmas David Graveney, Geoff Miller and Duncan Fletcher must resolve, starting with the captaincy.

This is as close as captaincy ever gets to a 50-50 decision. Andrew Strauss has won a series, has captained a county, is usually fit, doesn’t bowl, and is a Fletcher man. He is calm, thoughtful, educated and has made the most of limited talent. But he hasn’t captained England on tour or played a Test in Australia.

Andrew Flintoff has captained in India, the only place close to being as tough as Australia. He has charisma and almost unlimited talent, he scares the Aussies and inspires team-mates, especially the opening bowlers, Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard. But he can be tactically naïve, is apt to overbowl himself and keeps more of a distance from Fletcher.

The clinching question is: what feels more natural, Flintoff as captain with Strauss as his lieutenant, or the other way round? Answer: Flintoff, just.