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  • "Fitness is a relative term. I mean to say that it does not necessarily mean that one who runs hard and lifts weights is fit. Cricketing fitness is different. So if you can perform, it means you are fit."
    Sourav Ganguly provides his unique take on what constitutes fitness

    Jul 19, 2008

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    Thanks, Fred, and goodnight

    By Jonathan Liew last year, mid-September Leave a comment on this post

    So that’s probably it for Freddie, then. Whatever drivel the ECB can try and spin about his ankle needing time “to settle and recover before the process of further strengthening and assessment is intensified” – medico-speak for “he’s done it in again” – it’s probably safe to assume that a man on the wrong side of 30 who has played just one of his team’s last four Test series isn’t really one for the future. It’s time to look beyond.

    Flintoff

    Probably most likely to step into the breach in the short-term is Ravi Bopara. But he’s untried at Test level and despite knocking Mike Hussey over on his ODI debut, it’s hard to imagine him knocking over Test sides with his gentle trundlers off a short run. Similarly Paul Collingwood, who encouragingly hasn’t let snaffling Sourav Ganguly on a lucky LBW shout go to his head.

    So let’s look to the current crop of youngsters. There’s Adil Rashid, who scored his first Championship century this season, and team-mate Tim Bresnan, who has fought back well from being Jayasuriya’s bitch last summer. Younger still, there’s Alex Wakely at Northants and James Harris at Glamorgan. For some of these it looks like the next Ashes in 2009 will come a bit soon (Harris was born in 1990, for heaven’s sake), while none of them really looks like a potential Test number six. But then again, nor does Freddie at the moment.

    Who does everyone think will end up filling Fred’s specially-modified boots? A batsman? A bowler? Or is it time David Graveney got Mark Ealham back on the phone?

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    5 Responses to “Thanks, Fred, and goodnight”

  • anantha wrote:
    September 20th, 2007 at 9.29 pm

    Ain’t Ealham in the wrong side of 35? And ain’t he a trundler as well? I think one of these sub-20 players is going to have to be blooded.

  • James wrote:
    September 21st, 2007 at 4.43 am

    Flintoff isn’t on the wrong side of 30 till December. But I always say you’re only as old as your ankle feels.

  • Kathy wrote:
    September 21st, 2007 at 7.01 am

    It ain’t over till it’s over. They said Vaughan was finished too. So I haven’t given up on Fred yet.

    I back Broad as an allrounder actually. I think he has enormous potential as a fast bowler and he’s quite handy with the bat. He’s a feisty little bugger too, despite the six sixes — he’ll get over that. (And that’s “little” as in young, not in stature!)

    Flintoff’s problem is that he has been managed shockingly for a whole year now — he never should have had the captaincy in Australia and as soon as the Ashes were finished, he should have been rested. He was exhausted and limping then, but they ran him into the ground.

  • kimW wrote:
    September 21st, 2007 at 7.18 am

    Come on you lot, take a gamble!

    How about young Trego over in the west? I think he’d forgotten what sport he was playing there for a while, but it’s all coming back to him now.

  • Nick wrote:
    September 22nd, 2007 at 2.32 am

    Wasn’t there some talk of Harmison Jr being a promising all-rounder a couple of years ago?

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