Andrew Flintoff sidelined for 2010 season
Andrew Flintoff will not return to cricket during the 2010 season Lancashire County Cricket Club has announced.
The talismanic England all-rounder has not played competitive cricket since the deciding Ashes Test at The Oval last year as he undergoes an extended recovery from two knee operations.
Flintoff had been hoping to return to county cricket this summer, recently telling Sky Sports News: “I'm hoping to play again in the next few weeks. I'm back in the nets at http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Lancashire-c806 and from nowhere I've found the ability to bat again which is encouraging, I'm hitting the ball.”
Those hopes now appear to have been dashed, with a statement on his county club’s website stating that after consultation with Flintoff, surgeon Andy http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Williams-c98034 and the Lancashire CCC medical team, the 32-year-old “will not be returning to competitive cricket for the remainder of the 2010 season.”
Lancashire Cricket Director Mike Watkinson said in a statement on the Club’s website: “Whist Andrew has made significant progress, the combined opinion is that he is not quite ready for a return to cricket. He will continue his rehabilitation into the winter months and we will constantly monitor and review his progress so that he is better equipped for a return to action."
Flintoff had been included in IPL side Chennai Super Kings’ preliminary squad for the 2010 Champions League, which is due to take place in September, despite the fact he missed the team’s victorious 2010 Indian Premier League campaign due to his injury woes, but Lancashire’s announcement would now seem to have scuppered the $1.5million recruit’s chances of featuring in CSK’s final squad for the competition.
Freddie’s long lay-off must also bring into question his future as an England player. Though Flintoff called time on his Test career after England’s Ashes win last year, he has not retired from the shorter formats of the game and had been awarded an incremental contract for 2010.
However, with England going from strength to strength as an ODI side and winning the World Twenty20 in the Caribbean in Flintoff’s absence, breaking back into the side after such an extended period out of cricket will be no easy task for the Lancastrian.
The first challenge for Flintoff though is just to get back on the field at a county level, and that’s an assignment that has so far proved to be tougher than any Ashes Test.
Tags: