Coach Andrew Flintoff has selected his 16-year-old son Rocky for a tough England Lions tour of Australia next month that will serve as key Ashes preparation for Test spinner Shoaib Bashir.
Flintoff Sr was appointed Lions head coach in September following a return to the game that made his name over the last 15 months as he recovered from a car accident while filming BBC show Top Gear.
He took a youthful Lions squad for a camp in South Africa this winter, which culminated in a knock-about game involving every player in the squad against local opposition. His son Rocky, who made his first-team debut for Lancashire last summer, was in South Africa with England U19s, and found himself promoted to the Lions side for the match against a CSA XI following an injury to other players. He made four in his only innings.
Despite a first-class average of 12.4 in four matches and his tender age, Flintoff now finds himself as one of only seven frontline batsmen in a 16-strong Lions squad for the tour of Australia, where they will play two four-day matches in Brisbane against a CAXI and a first-class fixture against Australia A in Sydney. Flintoff’s potential is abundant and obvious, and he caught the eye this year with a series of innings for Lancashire’s second team that showed his strokeplay – especially the pull shot – to be eerily similar to his father, who was an England legend of the 2005 Ashes who won 79 Test caps.
Three Test players – Bashir, left-arm spinner Tom Hartley and the fit-again Josh Tongue – are selected for the squad, while white-ball international seamers John Turner and Pat Brown. Josh Hull, who was a shock Test debutant against Sri Lanka in September, will also travel with the squad as he recovers from injury.
There is a call-up for the prolific Essex seamer Sam Cook, who has a remarkable 308 first-class wickets at an average of 19.6, while the 30-year-old Warwickshire captain Alex Davies also makes the squad as a wicketkeeper-batsman. Both men will still harbour Test ambitions, even if England are intent on blooding young talent. A trio of highly-fancied young batsmen – Warwickshire’s Hamza Shaikh, Nottinghamshire’s Freddie McCann and Durham’s Ben McKinney – make the trip, alongside the Sussex all-rounder James Coles.
Durham’s Ollie Robinson, who toured New Zealand with the Test team this month, is one of a number of players thought to be pursuing franchise opportunities having been given the option of touring by England.
The trip represents an opportunity for a series of young quicks to stake an Ashes claim. Tongue has had a horror run with injury since playing two Tests in the summer of 2023, and is joined by new Hampshire signing Sonny Baker, Surrey’s Tom Lawes and Lancashire’s Mitch Stanley, as well as Brown, Cook and Turner. There is no place for Nottinghamshire’s Dillon Pennington, who was an unused member of the England squad for three Tests against West Indies last summer.
Analysis: Bashir must end debate over position
The name Flintoff stands out on any England cricket squad list and this represents another staggering promotion for young Rocky. But it is the Test spinner Shoaib Bashir who has the most to gain – or lose – from this trip to Australia.
England have had half an eye on the Ashes with their strong backing of Bashir this year. He was plucked from left-field for the tour of India earlier this year and, having impressed in three matches there, selected over his county colleague Jack Leach for the home summer, alongside him in Pakistan, and then ahead of him again in New Zealand.
The idea has always been that while Bashir could thrive in all conditions, the height and bounce England so love would be especially handy in Australia. A Lions tour involving three four-day matches is the perfect opportunity for Bashir to get the measure of Australian conditions. In Australia A – which is generally more of a second-string XI than the increasingly experimental and developmental Lions – he will face strong opposition keen to plonk him into the stands.
He will be supported by two former England off-spinners who have played Ashes cricket in Australia on the Lions coaching staff, in Graeme Swann and Richard Dawson. More than anything, it is an opportunity to bowl over after over, which he simply does not do in the home summer as he is not first-choice at Somerset.
Bashir finished his first year in Test cricket with 49 wickets. On the surface that was a very impressive haul, but it did come from 15 matches, at an average of 40. There were some real highs, especially at Trent Bridge in July, but he tailed off in the second half of the year, and appeared to struggle when Ben Stokes was not on the field (Stokes missed four and a half Tests with hamstring injuries). He will be on his own again this time, too.
England are unlikely to drop Bashir any time soon. It is not really their style. But a good Lions tour would go a long way to ending the debate about his position.
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