I HAD an operation on my troublesome ankle at the start of the year and began the long road back to recovery and the Ashes. Another reason to get fit was my wedding in March. On my stag weekend in Budapest I kept my bootcast on and carried my crutches. There were 55 of us ranging from old Preston mates to some of my Lancashire and England team-mates. I came back with my head shaved, which caused Rachael to have a second take when she saw me again, and I think my mobile phone was last seen floating down the Danube.

We had decided not to have a honeymoon. My stag weekend had interrupted my rehabilitation and I didn’t want any comeback if I wasn’t fit in time for the Ashes. Our first meeting with Australia was in the Twenty20 match at the Rose Bowl, which turned into everything we hoped it would be. To win by 100 runs is a big margin in any form of cricket, and if it did nothing else it proved to ourselves and everyone else that we were not a bad side. Everyone made a lot of me hitting Brett Lee on the shoulder with a short-pitched delivery which ended up ruling him out of the first couple of one-day games and began a rivalry with him which lasted for the rest of the summer.

I wasn’t consciously trying to target Brett, it was just the way I bowl at tailend batsmen. The Ashes had been the main talking point for months, but it was that Twenty20 victory that seemed to spark off the excitement.

• Extracted from Being Freddie — The Story So Far by Andrew Flintoff, to be published by Hodder & Stoughton on Thursday, September 29, priced £18.99. © Andrew Flintoff 2005