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Flintoff
out of the opening encounter
July 16, 2004:
England's team will be on surer footing when they return to Test
cricket at Lord's next Thursday, though not necessarily with their
best foot forward should injury problems to Andrew Flintoff and Mark
Butcher upset the team dynamic that served them so well in their
historic series win in the West Indies three months ago.
The selectors will need contingencies as well as replacements if a
similar balance is to be retained in the forthcoming Npower series
against the West Indies. The distinction is important especially as
Flintoff looks as if he will play solely as a batsman following a
slow-healing foot injury. So, while Butcher will be replaced should
his thigh strain fail to heal in time, Flintoff's role as a
specialist could shift both the emphasis and the personnel within
the bowling attack. These days Flintoff's batting is a marvellous
spectacle and his powerful strokes are able to drag even the most
dedicated soak from the bar. But while the bony spur on his left
foot does not threaten that part of his game, it has affected his
reliable bowling, an element crucial to England's recent Test
success.
Since his problem was diagnosed over a month ago, Flintoff has
batted like a man possessed, notching two superb one-day hundreds
for England and smiting county bowlers into neighbouring parishes
during the Twenty20 for Lancashire. Yet over the same period he has
managed just 2.5 overs, none of them in anger. Unless he makes a
miraculous recovery before Thursday, he will not be able to fulfil
his usual quota (17-25 overs per day), a workload, with the first
two Tests back-to-back, that could elude him until the third Test in
mid-August.
Without Big Fred's frisky back-of-a-length accuracy to control an
opponent's ardour, England's bowling becomes unbalanced, and if the
match were abroad, less threatening too. Fortunately, this one is at
Lord's, following a damp few weeks, which should allow Matthew
Hoggard and James Anderson to make nuisances of themselves. The lush
conditions will not suit all the quicker bowlers though. Simon
Jones, who prefers to reverse-swing the ball, would benefit from
drier outfields and squares in order to scuff the ball. The lack of
Flintoff the bowler also threatens to place more strain on Stephen
Harmison. In defeating New Zealand, Michael Vaughan relied
increasingly upon his tall strike bowler. Without Flintoff, that
need could increase, a situation Vaughan and the selectors must
address if England are not to run their most able match-winner into
the ground.
Yet should England go for reliability, a la Flintoff, or include
another thoroughbred in the hope it will lighten Harmison's burden?
Bowling the unglamorous overs, when the ball is soft and the pitch
flat, takes character. To keep an opponent in check at the same time
requires control. But while Flintoff possesses both, it is difficult
to think of another who so readily fills the role. Of the
contenders, Hoggard has heart, but can be costly when the pitch goes
dead or if his outswinger goes missing, while Jones, only just over
a foot injury himself and expensive in a recent outing for the MCC,
could probably do with a few more overs in his legs. Which leaves
Anderson, a mercurial performer who can veer between the sublime and
the ridiculous, depending on whether it is his bowling or his hairdo
that is attracting peoples' attention.
During the recent one-day series, there were signs that Anderson had
rekindled the zip and swing that made him such a handful when he
first burst on the scene 18 months ago. Both he and Jones will be in
the squad, but Anderson's recent fitness if not his form, could get
him the final nod next week. Butcher's absence should be more
straightforward should his thigh, strained while playing Twenty20
for Surrey, not have healed by Thursday. Having withdrawn from the
recent MCC match against the West Indies as well as Sunday's
Totesport League match against Kent as a precaution, Butcher has
been having nets with his father Alan at the Oval.
If he does not make it, Robert Key, better suited to Test matches
than the one-dayers he was selected for, would be an ideal
replacement, providing the West Indies do not bowl dibbly dobblers
at him. So far, in an international career that has seen him cope
with Australia's fastest bowlers at the WACA, their gentle pace has
proved his undoing.
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