New injury puts Flintoff in doubt

On the day that Flintoff was named in a 12-man England squad for Lord's, Sportsmail can reveal that the world's premier allrounder underwent a scan on his ankle after feeling discomfort while bowling for Lancashire against Hampshire on Saturday.

The scan showed that the injury is unrelated to the previous damage to his ankle which forced Flintoff to have two operations, but he is far from certain of being fit enough to start the Test series.

England will treat the injury on a day to day' basis but are reluctant to play Flintoff as a specialist batsman, such has been his lack of runs during a chastening winter. If he is not fit to take on an all-round role at Lord's, Middlesex's Owais Shah will make his second Test appearance and first at home.

Any injury to Flintoff's ankle must be a serious concern, not least because he needed a series of injections in it during the winter to get through the Ashes series. His bowling was by far his strongest suit during the winter and Flintoff would be a seriously weakened cricketer if he ever had to limit his ration of overs.

Flintoff had his first operation on the ankle ahead of the 2005 Ashes series that was to define his career but he required surgery again last year and missed the whole of England's 3-0 Test series victory over Pakistan.

The news came on the day that England were forced to name a party without injured captain Michael Vaughan, whose broken finger has failed to heal in time to give him a chance of being fit for Lord's. Andrew Strauss will lead the side.

England had originally planned to pick Vaughan in the hope that he would be fit enough by Thursday but when the captain suffered discomfort when batting in the nets on Saturday, the sensible option of giving him the more realistic target of being fit for the second Test at Headingley on May 25 was taken.

David Graveney, the chairman of selectors, said: Michael will be with the team at Lord's and will play a full part off the field. But we don't want to go down the road of injections and it was only fair to Andrew Strauss to give him the job now.'

Flintoff was overlooked in favour of Strauss as captain for new coach Peter Moores' first game in charge.

But Graveney was at pains to point out that the decision was taken purely for cricketing reasons' and had nothing to do with the infamous pedalo incident during the World Cup. Everybody is now starting with a clean slate,' said Graveney.

At that stage it had not emerged that Flintoff had been able to bowl only nine overs at the Rose Bowl on Saturday because of his new setback.

James Anderson, unlucky to miss out on the squad, will come into the 12 if today's further examination on Flintoff's ankle brings more bad news.

Matt Prior won the hotly contested race to become England's new wicketkeeper and will make his Test debut at Lord's, but it is clear that he will be under immediate pressure to perform if he is hold off the challenge of a clutch of keeper-batsmen.

The selectors considered the claims of James Foster and Tim Ambrose, who has emerged as a contender with his early season runs for Warwickshire, before plumping for a batsmankeeper in Prior who Moores knows well from their days at Sussex. World Cup keeper Paul Nixon was not considered for a Test debut at 36.