The question for the England management is simple: is it worth Flintoff risking missing this winter's series in South Africa and the Ashes that follow in order to rattle out a few West Indian batsman this summer?
The empty, snow-covered streets serve as a reminder of what's missingin this town, and he lets people trundle through the winter chill as if they're serving a penance for merely existing.
Shantry admits he is not missing the freezing conditions of the English winter but he is keeping in touch with his Worcestershire colleagues who are in back in pre-season training.
The following winter they signed Jackson, who proved to be the missing piece as the club went all the way in both 1977 and 1978, defeating the Dodgers both times.
San'ya has aged with its residents, old men with creased faces and missing teeth who squat and smoke on the pavements, drift from bar to bar, or sleep it off in the winter sun on cardboard and plastic matting.