Andrew Flintoff has targeted redemption for last year's Ashes humiliation in next summer's Test series against Australia and revealed that his career would have been over had a fourth operation on his ankle proved unsuccessful.

The England all-rounder captained the team on the disastrous tour of Australia in 2006-07 which ended in a 5-0 whitewash, and lost the leadership soon after. He says the scars still remain. "As emotional as winning the Ashes [in 2005] was, the emotions of being thrashed were much stronger," Flintoff said. "I've never been a goal-setter, I'm a sports psychologist's nightmare to be honest, but I really want to make up for that next summer.

"Not that I can look too far ahead. We've got a big one-day series in India coming up and that will be a true test of where we are as a one-day team. We can't afford for South Africa to be a false dawn [when England won the series 4-0 last month]."

Injury has restricted his international appearances since the last Ashes tour, but the Lancashire player made a successful return from a persistent ankle problem which required a fourth operation, conducted by Niek van Dijk, the Dutch specialist, in September last year. Flintoff admits at one stage he feared for his career.

"It was the fourth operation and I knew deep down that it had to be the last," Flintoff said. "If this didn't work then it was difficult to know where I could have gone after that.

"There had been so much rehabilitation, so much fitness work, so many cans of Red Bull to give me energy, but until then nothing had really worked.

"But this guy found a piece of bone that had become embedded in my ankle and simply removed it. Niek was confident I could get back after that but me and Dave Roberts [personal trainer and physio] were not 100 per cent convinced."