“This sounds awful, part of me wishes I’d been killed. Part of me thinks, ‘I wish I’d died’,” he said.

“I didn’t want to kill myself. I wouldn’t mistake the two things. I was not wishing, I was just thinking, ‘this would have been so much easier’.”

Flintoff was driving a Morgan Super 3 three-wheeled sports car when it overturned.

The open-topped car is capable of hitting 130 mph (209 km/h) and the cricketer wasn’t wearing a helmet when it flipped.

Flintoff’s surgeon Jahrad Haq describes the former England captain’s injuries as among the five worst he has come across in 20 years and likened the reconstruction process to a jigsaw with missing pieces.

“I remember my head got hit, I got dragged out. I went over the back of the car and it pulled my face down on the runway, about 50 metres, underneath the car,” Flintoff said.

“My biggest fear was, I didn’t think I had a face. I thought my face had come off. I was frightened to death.”

The BBC “rested” Top Gear for the foreseeable future in 2023 after reaching a financial settlement with Flintoff.

But he remains resentful about the entertainment culture he was involved in, likening it to his own injury-ravaged playing career.

“I learned this in sport as well. All the injuries, all the injections, all the times I got sent out on a cricket field and treated like a piece of meat,” he said.

“That’s TV and sport. It’s quite similar, you’re just a commodity.”

Despite regular flashbacks about the accident, Flintoff has gradually rediscovered the motivation to resume his public life as head coach of England Lions and Northern Superchargers.

“I don’t think I’m ever going to be better, just different now. I’m getting there slowly,” he said.

“Now I try to take the attitude that the sun will come up tomorrow and my kids will still give me a hug. I’m probably in a better place now.”