Flintoff is not finished - Moores

Andrew Flintoff © Getty Images

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England coach Peter Moores insists key all-rounder Andrew Flintoff can still be a force at international level despite returning home early from another tour with ankle problems.

The Lancashire all-rounder flies home from South Africa today after feeling discomfort in his troublesome left ankle throughout England’s doomed campaign in the World Twenty20 tournament, which ended with their fourth successive defeat on Wednesday night.

He will miss the forthcoming five-match one-day series in Sri Lanka, which begins with the first of three matches in Dambulla on October 1, and now faces a race against time to prove his fitness for the Test tour departing in mid-November.

It is the latest in a long list of problems with his left ankle, which has been operated on three times in the last 18 months and forced him to miss nearly all of this summer recuperating from further surgery.

But Moores is confident further strengthening work on his ankle during the next few weeks in conjunction with England’s medical staff could help Flintoff make a full recovery and resume his international career.

“He is only 29 and he has got a huge amount of cricket left in him - I’m sure if this goes well they will get it sorted and he will come back and be the force he was before,” stressed Moores, who has replaced Flintoff with Hampshire seamer Chris Tremlett in the squad for Sri Lanka.

“The medical team need to find out what he can and can’t do to move it forward and that’s what we have been doing. He has also proved in the tournament that he can play with it.

Peter Moores is backing Andrew Flintoff to recover

“He would be up there with the top bowlers in the tournament with his consistency, he has shown he can perform with the ankle the way it is at the moment.

“But I think we’re all agreed that isn’t good enough and we need to get it better if we can and look at every opportunity to do that for the long term - he’s still, in cricket terms, got fairly young legs and he’s still got a lot of cricket left in him.”

Since the first operation on his ankle midway through 2006, Flintoff has played only five out of the last 16 Tests and only 24 of the 43 one-day internationals after being sidelined with various setbacks and recovery periods.

Neither England or Flintoff, however, believe they have exhausted all solutions for his continual ankle problems and both remain optimistic at this stage that he can prove his fitness and feature in the three-Test series in Sri Lanka before Christmas.

“The surgery hasn’t been a complete failure, but like most things it’s not an exact science,” explained Moores.

“They are trying to find the solution to an ankle that has had a lot of hard wear over seven or eight years of bowling and they have got to try and manage that.

“He’s seeing the top surgeons and he is quite happy with the way it has gone. No one is trying to hide the fact that Andrew has got an ankle that needs sorting out.

Andrew Flintoff has been blighted by injury recently

“It’s a tough problem they need to solve and part of that journey is that they’ve got the pain reduced and he has been able to play with it, but there’s still some discomfort there and we’ve got to try and remove that altogether - we’re trying to get to a situation where he can play pain-free and do the things he wants to do.”

Moores stressed: “All the way through this tournament he has done loads of strengthening on his ankle and it actually feels more stable now than it did at the start of the tournament, which is good.

“It’s difficult for any player to keep playing under those conditions and it’s also quite hard for the team so the sensible thing to do is to see what happens in this period.”

Flintoff has winced with the pain during several stages in the tournament and has tried numerous methods to solve his ankle problems, including specially-designed boots and considering changing his action to lessen the impact in the delivery stride.

For now, though, Moores must accept being without England’s leading all-rounder for the next challenge of the winter in Sri Lanka.

“All the way through we’re learning about how to play our best one-day cricket and it’s part of a journey to get to where we want to be, which is ultimately the 2011 World Cup,” added Moores.

“The key is we take the lessons, good and bad, and we move forward quickly because Sri Lanka is going to be a really tough series, we know that and that’s going to be another test for us.”