Beleaguered Moores Hangs His Hope on Flintoff Return

If Peter Moores looked slightly less irrepressible than usual on Saturday evening, then it was hard to blame him. After losing his captain, Paul Collingwood, to a four-game ban earlier in the week and doing his best to keep outrage over the run-out of Grant Elliott to a minimum, he was forced to sit through another one-day surrender to New Zealand before admitting that the return of Andrew Flintoff for the four-Test series against South Africa may not be as straightforward as some were expecting.

Of all these issues the last may be the most sensitive. Flintoff has returned from injury under Moores once before, sending down 35 overs in the one-day series against India last August following a third operation on his left ankle in June 2007, then limping his way through the World Twenty20 in September - the precursor to his fourth bout of ankle surgery a month later. Until yesterday's spell for Lancashire against Sussex at Hove Flintoff had bowled only six overs in county cricket since recovering from the side strain he picked up in May, and Moores was understandably erring on the side of caution when he discussed the squad for the first Test, which is due to be named on Thursday.

"At the moment we haven't picked that team, so I'm not going to say who's going to play and who isn't," he said. "The one thing about Andrew is that he's back on the park and he's bowling and he got four-for on Friday [in two overs in a Twenty20 match against Durham] and that's great. But we're also sensible about it because we know you've got to be bowling-fit and match-fit rather than just getting the injury right, and that's common sense."

Flintoff has been greeted with open arms on previous premature returns to the England dressing room but the management is aware that another rushed comeback could prove fatal to his chances of ever regaining the form that helped to see off Australia in 2005. Even so, his continued absence must have been especially galling while England were capitulating at Lord's on Saturday.

"It's disappointing to lose a series, especially as it's in England and it's one we thought we could win," said Moores. "We've had chances. Their top score in the series was 266, so we've bowled well as a unit. But we've had the opportunity to chase runs down and we didn't do it: 180-odd at Bristol was very gettable. We have to take that on the chin and start to identify areas where we can get more consistent. We've got a big challenge moving forward."

Moores denied England's one-day side, which has now lost 3-1 in successive series to New Zealand, was going backwards following the surprise defeats last year of India and Sri Lanka. But he was able to point only to the development of Stuart Broad and Owais Shah, England's top-scorer both on Saturday and in the series overall, as evidence.

There was a spirited but not entirely convincing defence of his wicket-keeper Tim Ambrose, who scored 10 runs in five innings in his first 50-over series and on Saturday dropped a horrible skyer off Jamie How to strengthen the case for a one-day recall for Matt Prior, and justified praise for the captaincy of Collingwood's stand-in, Kevin Pietersen. But it needed Pietersen's less convoluted terminology to sum up England's problems in the one-day arena. "I don't mind if a guy gets nought," he said, "but when you get in, the key is to take responsibility."

He was clearly pointing the finger at his team-mates in the top order, with Ian Bell the prime culprit following a characteristically infuriating 27 at Lord's. But a sense of responsibility - as much as a fit and firing Flintoff - is what England could really do with right now.