CricDigs Blogs

They call him Big Freddie, Yorkshire’s cricketing pride, one among the few quality all-rounders the world of cricket has to offer and one among England’s only two match-winners — that is Andrew Flintoff for you and he is perhaps, the most precious English cricketing commodity along with Kevin Pietersen. What they forget to mention usually is that he is also among the game’s most injury-prone internationals although he is very effective indeed. The ECB and Flintoff’s personal preferences in him making a comeback to the side after his most recent injury are going to run into a tussle for sure.

There is no denying the fact that players shouldn’t be stopped from participating in non-international matches if there is good money to be made and Freddie is being offered in excess of a million dollars. However, how do you support this theory when the player is simply unable to keep himself fit even for one season and is so precious to the team’s interests? England and Wales Cricket Board’s David Collier can’t be blamed when he says that they don’t want Flintoff from playing in the crazy format of the T20 between a busy season that will see England play a lot of test matches. Even former England captain and a big supporter of Freddie— Nasser Hussain has openly criticised the ECB for not being more strict and in his opinion, Flintoff should have been simply told that his body just wasn’t good enough to take up so much pressure and hence, he needed to preserve himself for international duties.

This may sound unfair, but then think again, if a player is habitually injured nearly every alternate season and is integral to the team winning (in England’s case, probably for winning anything at all) something credible, shouldn’t he at least listen to the cricketing body of his country? Would we tolerate if Dhoni would repeatedly get injured only to show up match-fit for the Chennai franchise of the IPL and keep on missing international matches?