CricInfo Home
News Home

NEWS FOCUS
Rsa in Pak
NZ in India
Zim in Aus

Domestic
Other Series

Flintoff destroys Essex with 50-ball century

Lancs (301-6) bt Essex (298) by 3 runs

ALMOST too good to be true. Andrew Flintoff's 143 against Essex yesterday took a mere 66 balls. It was an innings of power, maturity and almost perfunctory brilliance.

Flintoff will face better bowling when he steps into the World Cup wearing England's blue next month but, even scaled down accordingly, the 21-year-old's CGU National League Division One hundred for Lancashire at the County Ground was a stupendous effort.

Lancashire, defending champions in that they won last year's 40-overs AXA League, should have been guaranteed an easier victory than later transpired, Essex almost making the 18 they needed off Glen Chapple's final over.

Over the winter Flintoff enjoyed an eye-catching England A tour of Zimbabwe and South Africa and he consolidated during the England World Cup squad's excursion to Lahore and Sharjah. So his first appearance of the English summer could hardly have been more encouraging.

Yesterday he followed his 90 minutes of batting mayhem with three wickets and two catches, but his hundred off 50 balls was certainly a hard act to follow.

His start was circumspect - he failed to score off his first ball but he was soon ploughing into Stuart Law's seamers with two driven boundaries and his only edged four, followed by two sixes in three balls next over from Peter Such's off-spin. The second six carried about 100 yards over the Tom Pearce Stand before splashing down in the River Can with a precision that would have had Houston Control in ecstasy.

The all-rounder hit 15 fours and nine sixes, though he rarely wasted the chance to punch singles during a stand of 179 in 20 overs with John Crawley, his captain.

For the first 18 overs Lancashire pitter-pattered around before Flintoff's arrival, Neil Fairbrother having drilled a return catch to Such second ball. What followed was, to be hoped, a preview of the sort of spectacular action the World Cup could produce.

Flintoff's fifty passed in a blur after 24 balls and he sped to 95 with 22 runs off an Ashley Cowan over. One of those deliveries was a no-ball, but the free hit now permitted the delivery after the overstep was indecipherable from any other ball, so in command was the tyro.

Next over, a six off Paul Grayson took Flintoff past his hundred. It was six balls slower than the league's record, held by Mark Ealham and his 44-baller for Kent against Derbyshire at Maidstone in 1995.

Lancashire's 45-over total of 301 did not intimidate Essex. They made an entertaining attempt at the target, and Robert Rollins's innings of 87 off 51 balls in the evening gloom, almost half of them with a runner, would have been a day's highlight in most other circumstances.