As awaited, Andrew Flintoff’s name has been announced in the England squad for the upcoming second test match against South Africa in Leeds. He is included in place of pace bowler Chris Tremlett. Flintoff will play test match cricket after January 2007. The 30-year old England all-rounder had a badly affected cricket career due to injuries.

With batting averages of 32.5 and 31.5 in test cricket and one-day international cricket respectively, he is far more dangerous player than the statistics suggest. With bowling averages of 32 and 25 in tests and one-day international cricket, he is unarguably one of the best all-rounders of modern cricket and England’s greatest all-rounder after Ian Botham.

The 6’4’’ tall Flintoff made his test debut at the age of 20. But he has had continuous injury problems due to his over weight. He faced difficulties even in bowling due to over weight. In 2001 he was send to Rod Marsh’s ECB Academy by team management to solve the problems he had. He became a different cricketer after that. He performed extremely well in the 2002 summer season in England. But again after some time he had injury problem, this time a Hernia.

Freddie come back again in 2003 World Cup and became the most economical bowler of the series. Then he made major contributions in away series against South Africa helping England winning the series 2-1. But the best is yet to come. In one of the greatest test matches of all time, at Edgbaston, he single handedly won the match for England with a 2 run margin! After that he made his maiden Ashes hundred at Trent Bridge and with a 5 wicket haul at the Oval he has helped England to win Ashes in a great way. In that series the Flintoff played probably the best cricket of his life.

His injuries continued in the 2006-07 India and Pakistan series. With the ankle injury he hasn’t featured in any of the 7 tests England played in 2007. He underwent the ankle operation in September 2007. Since then he was out of all from of cricket.
After the disappointing performance of England bowling attack in the first test against South Africa, the England Selectors are forced to include Flintoff in the squad. "There's a bit of X-factor about him," said skipper Vaughan. "You know when you give him the ball he can create something, and in the past when he's gone out to bat, he's made things happen, and he has the ability to take wonderful catches. As a captain it's always nice to have that kind of player in and around the team, and I'm sure opposition teams around the world would rather play England without Freddie Flintoff than have him in the team."
The England team and team management is hoping that Flintoff will provide the “X-factor” the team wanted to beat South Africa in the ongoing Test Cricket Series.

Comments

Add New RSS

3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

Newer news items:

Older news items: