Flintoff faces tough choices on his future

The decision to send for Alex Tudor to replace Andrew Flintoff leaves the Lancastrian's career at a crossroads.

There must now be a serious question over whether he will ever bowl again. He has dieted with determination, and has a history of operations and cortisone injections behind him. His large frame would appear to be too frail for the rigours of fast bowling.

"He has a very difficult decision to make," said coach Duncan Fletcher. "Depending on what comes back from further investigations on his back problem, the decision has then got to be made by him and it won't be easy to make."

"He may have an operation or he may decide against it and just leave it and try and bowl again in three years, but he will have lost out on a lot of experience by then."

There are hopes that Flintoff will be able to earn a Test place on the strength of his batting alone. A Test average of just 16 suggests that this is still some way of at present.

"He's such an exciting player, he can tear any attack apart and with a bit more experience he could be a very good batsman. He just gets a bit confused about how to play the game," said Fletcher.

"At the moment he doesn't know when to defend and when to attack and he will only learn that with experience."

The disappointment for England and Flintoff is that he has promised so much. A hard hitting, fast bowling allrounder provides the team with balance, and helps strengthen Flintoff's own claim for a place. Worryingly, Fletcher is already talking about him as an allrounder in the past tense.

"All these back problems give him a lot of trouble, but anyone who can bat and bowl strengthens their position to play international cricket," said Fletcher.

"Any cricket side likes an all-rounder, England have been looking for one for some time and for his part I think he could have been a very effective all-rounder."

England considered keeping Flintoff with the team solely as a batsman, but decided to call for Tudor to provide bowling cover.

"Losing him leaves us light on the batting, but if we didn't have someone who could bowl it would leave us light in that area if one or two guys went down with a stomach virus."

"We only have two real quickies and if Caddick and Gough got a problem we would suddenly be in a situation where we would be looking around for someone to open the bowling."

"Alex is not a bad batter, he's pretty effective and we wanted to get an all-rounder to cover for Dominic Cork and Craig White."

Flintoff still has a role to play for England on the Pakistan tour. He is likely to play as a specialist batsman in the one-day series before he returns home.

"He could bat number three because these wickets are flat, but batting at number six is the best position for him," said Fletcher. "You sometimes have to be careful with young players moving them up and down the batting order."