Ashes summers are always magical times, usually more for one team than another. England found this out the hard way when they surrendered the beloved urn to Australia with a disgraceful, embarrassing, humiliating 5-0 whitewash in 2006. Three years later, the teams contested the Ashes again, this time in Wales (of all places), and with Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff set to retire. Jarrod Kimber was watching.

Kimber tells us in Ashes 2009: When Freddie Became Jesus that he's not an Australian journalist of any reputation or note. Indeed, when he was interviewed for television after the fifth Test (more because of his Australian accent than anything else), his family thought that the on-screen caption of "Australian journalist Jarrod Kimber" was hilarious.

The lack of anything remotely approaching professional journalism is both the book's best asset and its critical weakness. Kimber's writing is fun, profane and self-depreciating (also very England-depreciating and Australia-depreciating). Instead of trying to explain the series with statistics and figures, he writes of seeing scalpers operate in full view of the police outside the Oval. Rather than look at the 2009 Ashes in the context of other Ashes series, he observes that sometimes, following the action at the ground is inferior to watching it on television.

The way Kimber spins it, you can almost imagine the crisp sound of leather on willow, the gentle ripple of applause for a well-taken single, the groans and moans when England collapsed at Headingly, and the frenzied roars when Flintoff ran out Ricky Ponting at the Oval.

That's the good. The bad is that he often rambles. It's usually with the best of intentions, like talking about Australia's selection policies for the Ashes. But unless you know the ins and outs of the Aussie state circuit, the nuances of Graham Manou vs. Brad Haddin are lost. Similarly, when Kimber writes of the actual cricket, he switches between a broad, bird's-eye view of the action and a detailed, point-by-point analysis (still swearing and skewering everyone and everything in the process).

Maybe it's just that the 2009 Ashes happened a long time ago (I know, only two years, but this is sport). Since then, we've had another Ashes series, and two people Kimber writes about quite colorfully - Alistair Cook and Paul Collingwood - have switched ends of the spectrum in the interim. While Cook floundered in 2009, he was Man of the Series in 2011. Collingwood held England together in 2009; in 2011, his retirement from Test cricket was greeted more with resignation than shock. To write Kimber praise Collingwood and slag Cook made me think more of the 2011 Ashes than it did the 2009 series. Not Kimber's fault, of course, but it's a distraction.

2009 had Flintoff, of course, and it's surprising that Kimber doesn't give more time to England's Messiah. He does point out that Flintoff's figures aren't brilliant and that England managed just fine without him. He also points out that none of that mattered. While James Anderson and Monty Panesar clinging on for the draw in Cardiff was arguably the key moment of the series, the only one that people will remember is Flintoff at the Oval, standing tall, arms raised, as every English player on the ground - and indeed, every Englishman alive - ran to him.

It's hard to judge 2009 Ashes: When Freddie Became Jesus so long after the dust has settled and stumps were drawn, and I might think more favorably of the book had I read when the world was still basking in an Australian defeat. That said, it's still a fun and entertaining book that will speak to the cricket lover, as opposed to the cricket purist. And to me, that's always a good thing.

4.0/5.0: Considering Freddie Flintoff, that tragic hero of tragic heroes, this vulgar, flawed, but good-hearted book is right up his alley.