He’s played in some Tests and he could play in more.”Now, some time later Duncan Fletcher got me to make a presentation to Flintoff for some reason or another. It took place out on the field at Trent Bridge, and I said, ‘I want to run something by you which might be of benefit to you. “I’ll tell you a story about Flintoff, but it starts with [Ricky] Ponting, who wouldn’t get up from the selection table until [Andrew] Symonds was in Australia’s 2003 World Cup side. The book was completed in February, which makes these words, on page 266, impressively prescient. “Flintoff will be the key man during the Australian tour of England in 2005,” the sage wrote. “If he fires, and the rest of the bowling attack are in top form, England have a real chance.”And so it has transpired, with, perhaps, a little input from Benaud himself. There was no time wasted, no 26 no-balls in an innings.”Benaud’s manifesto for change is detailed in his absorbing new book, My Spin On Cricket.

In 1961 we had the most wonderful series, and there was only one no-ball in the entire summer, by Fred Trueman. The umpires told us, ‘we want you to be landing on the bowling crease or thereabouts, so no bowler is taking an unfair advantage. If we feel he is then we’ll warn him and then call him.’ That’s what happened to Fred. ‘There were 5,000 no-balls bowled before 1969, when the front-foot law was introduced, and there have been 27,000 since. It will stay the way it is but it seems to me to be a stupid law.

To get the ball into the bowler’s hand as soon as possible.” A perfectly timed pause.”But if there were to be a problem, the umpires would only have one person to have a chat with.”He would also change the front-foot law, which has bedevilled the Australian bowlers. Benaud has admired the way in which Flintoff and Simon Jones, in particular, have found reverse swing so early in the innings, but, if he were the grand panjandrum of cricket (and cricket could certainly do worse), he would stop anyone but the bowler working on the ball.To diminish the possibility of cheating? “No To save time. You could put them in 50 times with 24 balls to face and you’d get them out 50 times…”What almost undid the Australians in Manchester – where Benaud enjoyed one of his finest hours as a player, captaining Australia to an improbable victory in 1961 and taking 6 for 70 in the process – was reverse swing. Someone once described him as looking like a successful ladies hairdresser (retired), and I can’t do better than that.I ask what, for him, will be the enduring images of this remarkable cricketing summer? “[Andrew] Flintoff going up to [Brett] Lee at Edgbaston [to check on his well-being after England had won] was the best example of the excellent spirit between the sides, even though the competition has been fierce. And at Old Trafford, [Glenn] McGrath and Lee facing those last 24 balls.

In England, they always base themselves in the same suite at the same hotel near Marble Arch, and it is there that this encounter takes place, on one of the hottest days of the year, with Benaud, as ever, the epitome of cool elegance. He and Daphne have homes in Australia and the south of France, indeed Benaud, characteristically, has scrupulously researched his French heritage (his great-grandfather, Jean Benaud, was a Bordeaux-born sea captain who arrived in Australia in 1840 and liked what he saw). As a commentator, I always had the feeling that the best series was 1981, but this one has shaded it, there’s no question about that I’ve never known such excitement. There are people, rational in their everyday lives, good at their jobs, used to writing cheques for 50 million quid, who can’t bear to be in the same room as the picture I know one young guy, a good young cricketer…

We had an e-mail from his parents the other day saying that he went to his bedroom (during the nailbiting finale of the fourth Test) and pulled the covers over his head.”The “we” refers to him and his English wife, Daphne, whom he married in 1967, shortly after divorce from Marcia, the mother of his two sons. If Australia are good enough to win, they deserve to keep the Ashes even though they have been outplayed for much of the time. And if England win 3-1 it will be a result we can all applaud.”Looking back rather than forward, Benaud thinks that this has already been the greatest series he has seen, and will remain so even if the fifth Test is washed out.”The best series I ever played in was the tied-Test series [Australia v West Indies] in 1960-61. “It’s never a good thing for Australia to lose the Ashes.”OK, but is there any part of Benaud, one of the most successful of Australian cricket captains yet one of the least overtly partisan of Aussies, that hopes England prevail?”No What I would really like at The Oval is a result. It’s been such a good summer, it would be a pity if a drawn match decided the Ashes. Now, it may be that this era is coming to the end of the road, as eras do. Australia lost [Alan] Davidson, [Neil] Harvey, Ken McKay and myself in the space of a few months, but they kept going.”Might it, perversely, be a good thing for Australia to lose, in that the selectors will be compelled to introduce new talent?The eyes narrow just a fraction more.