Flintoff to be sent home after one-day series

By Ted Corbett

KARACHI, OCT. 19. Andrew Flintoff, the huge England all-rounder, will be sent home after the one-day international cricket series against Pakistan in a new attempt to discover the cause of the back pain which has made even a few gentle deliveries at the nets a discomfort in the last five days. He was warned before he took part in the ICC Knock-Out in Kenya that if he could not bowl 15 overs a day here he would not finish this tour.

Flintoff, 6ft 4in and a slimmed down 16st, will be replaced by another fast bowling giant 6ft 5in 15st Alex Tudor who, for all his undefeated 99 off New Zealand in the first Test of 1999, is still considered unsuitable to be classified as an all-rounder.

Flintoff's injury gives him a wonderful opportunity to prove himself both as batsman and bowler, particularly as England is concerned about the fitness of Andrew Caddick who played all last summer with a troublesome ankle injury. As for Flintoff I am told he had been expecting the quiet knock on the door of his room last night when Duncan Fletcher, the England coach and Dean Conway, its physio, told him that he would be going home before the Test series. Fletcher encouraged him to take every opportunity to get fit and seemed to hold out a hope of a place in the one-day squad for Sri Lanka in the spring but added that he had a big decision to make about his future.

``I believe he can make it as a batsman alone at Test level. I am sure he is a very good batsman,'' said Fletcher, who is not a man to make judgements lightly. ``But we are not looking for changes. We want a solution to Flintoff's problem back. England have been looking for an all-rounder for some time and he is the sort of player we need. In the end he may have to concentrate on his batting but at the moment we want to find a cure.''

Conway painted a less optimistic picture. ``We have tried an exploratory injection, an injection aimed at a cure and a minor operation and none of these have succeeded,'' he said. ``There are no indications that surgery would help. We brought him to Karachi because there were signs that he might be able to bowl in Pakistan but in the nets he has not even reached stage one of his recovery. He has not bowled a long spell since the third Test in Durban nearly a year ago and we feel we have not made any progress in the last 18 months. We should not stop looking for a solution but there is clearly a lot of work ahead to find the answer.''

Flintoff, 22, was inevitably hailed as ``the new Botham'' when he first appeared for Lancashire five years ago but his well- documented weight problems - he weighed 17st 12lb or as much as the world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis at one stage last summer - has left him uncertain of his own future and it was not surprising that he declined to add to the formal announcement of his departure today. In fact, the fuss over his weight has left him with a deep antagonism towards my trade; now he needs sympathy from everyone connected with the game if he is to make the impression he promised when he made his England debut against South Africa in 1998.

He knew a cloud hung over his tour before the start. In Kenya he made 25 - and ``batted very well'' said coach Fletcher - against South Africa but once the three one-day games end here he will once again set out on a road paved with uncertainties as he tries to solve the mystery of his unstable spine. Conway reports good progress by the left-arm spinner Ashley Giles, who has ankle problems, as England prepares for its first practice game tomorrow.

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