Test match cricket made him. But in his leaving of Test cricket, Andrew Flintoff makes a small but significant contribution to the decline and fall of the Test. He will be leaving the five-day game of a million nuances, a million momentum shifts, a million games-within-a-game — the form of cricket that brings us the highest form of drama in sport.

But he will still be available for the sawn-off format of one-day cricket, and the high-octane stuff of Twenty20 — in particular for the big money of the Indian Premier League. It is a decision that invites an easy cynicism about Flintoff’s motives, and a discouraging view of the future of Test cricket.

Me, I’m easy with Flintoff’s decision, less easy about Test cricket. Flintoff has made a pile of money already. Anyone who saw him bowl his guts out on a dead wicket in Cardiff last week knows that he is the least cynical athlete in sport. But these days we are all just waiting for the next breakdown: after four ankle operations and another on a knee, we wince every time he slams that left leg on to the ground in a bowler’s delivery stride. He has never held back, never been capable of becoming a canny old pro. Alas, giving everything over five days is a vanishing option.

There are other formats of cricket available to him — not the case for players 50 years ago. There is a living to be made that way — not the case even a decade ago. A quarter of a century ago John Woodcock, a former cricket correspondent of this parish, wrote that one-day cricket would drive out Test cricket “as the grey squirrel drove out the red”.

Twenty20 is a still more ferocious beast. There are signs, in India and the West Indies in particular, that Test cricket is being marginalised in its favour. In some places, Twenty20 is where all the revenue is, where all the sponsorship is, where all the crowds are, where all the players are heading. Flintoff’s decision to join in will hardly slow down this process.

But it’s the last thing Flintoff wants. It is as a Test cricketer that he has become a national and global hero, and yesterday he described Test match cricket against Australia for the Ashes as “the ultimate”. I couldn’t agree more. And I have always thought the red was the ultimate squirrel.