Flintoff's All-round Return

Andrew Flintoff yesterday took a major step towards his goal of returning to international cricket later this month by bowling four overs in Lancashire's championship match against Sussex.

Flintoff had been scheduled to play as a specialist batsman in the early stages of his comeback from his latest ankle operation in May, but after some encouraging morning messages from England's chairman of selectors, David Graveney, who joined his fellow selector Geoff Miller in Aigburth yesterday, a rumor swept the ground during the tea interval that he might be ready to resume his all-round status earlier than expected.

After two tidy overs up a slight slope from the pavilion end, he switched to the Mersey end that he has favoured in previous matches in Liverpool, and nipped a couple of balls away from Sussex's left-hander Mike Yardy at a lively pace. "He's come through with flying colours, and the important thing is he's symptom-free," said Lancashire's manager, Mike Watkinson, who has unhappy memories of Flintoff breaking down in his comeback from his 2006 ankle operation in a championship game against Kent in Canterbury just over a year ago. "He wasn't pinning his ears back and giving it full whack, he was just very smooth. That's what happens with bowlers coming back from injury. It's like striking a sweet golf ball."

Flintoff had hit six crisp boundaries in making 34 from 36 balls before being given lbw to the Pakistani seamer Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, and Watkinson hopes that he will be fit to bowl a few more overs today before continuing his comeback in the Twenty20 finals day at Edgbaston on Saturday.

Graveney suggested that next week's third Test against India at the Oval is still out of the question, but he is increasingly hopeful that Flintoff will be ready for the seven-match one-day series which starts at the Rose Bowl on August 21, and after that the Twenty20 World Championship in South Africa.

"His rehabilitation has gone really well," said Graveney before he left Liverpool at lunch... after Flintoff's innings, but well before his bowling stint. "He's started to bowl and there's nothing that I've heard to the contrary that would prevent him from playing in the one-dayers towards the back end of the month. Hopefully he will be available for that, and he has certainly indicated that will be the case. Andrew knows his own body and the target is for him to be available for the one-dayers."