Anything but a rocky start for Flintoff Jr on county debut

Young Rocky Flintoff held them up for a while, scoring 32 on debut and passing a serious cricketing examination on the day he and many other 16-year-olds were receiving their GCSE results, but Surrey’s determined County Championship challenge otherwise picked up where it left off 49 days ago — when they defeated Essex by 145 runs — as Lancashire were bowled out for 204 on Thursday.
Flintoff, watched by his father, Andrew, from a hospitality box, faced testing grey conditions with a composure that belied his 16 years and 137 days — making him Lancashire’s youngest first-class player. He came in at 33 for two, after new-ball strikes by Jordan Clark and Dan Worrall, and although dropped at third slip on 13 off Tom Lawes, looked a real talent throughout.
In batting style and mannerisms, too, he is a spooky spitting image of his father, who made his Lancashire debut aged 17 in 1995. Matty Hurst also caught the eye in a busy 46, until magnificently held low at leg slip by Conor McKerr off a deserving Sam Curran, who had seen him badly dropped by Clark the over before.
Clark, with four for 57, and Worrall, Division One’s leading wicket-taker with 37 after taking three for 31, again spearheaded Surrey’s relentless seam attack, while both McKerr and Curran made useful contributions in their first red-ball appearances of the summer. By stumps Surrey were 83 without loss in reply, completely in command and already looking to stretch a 23-point lead at the top of the table over second-placed Somerset, before play began, with five games to go.
A powerful mix of emotions is fuelling Surrey’s attempt to win a third successive championship: strong collective and individual ambition, of course, fierce pride that four of their players — three of them homegrown, including England’s caretaker captain — are involved in a Test match while their team-mates continued the title quest, remorselessly working their way through Lancashire’s batting, and a deep sadness at the tragic death earlier this month of Graham Thorpe.
Thorpe, winner of 100 Test caps, was also an integral member of the last Surrey team to dominate county cricket, under Adam Hollioake in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and was highly respected as a batting coach — for his club and for England — after his playing career. Surrey’s flag flew at half-mast above the Oval pavilion and both teams, who wore black armbands, lined up to observe a minute’s silence before play as a sizeable crowd also stood to pay their own respects.
Yet there is also another important reason why Surrey’s players and support staff have been so focused on the prize this summer — it is the knowledge that Alec Stewart, Surrey’s beating heart and a close friend and contemporary of Thorpe, is standing down at the end of this year from the director of cricket role he has performed with such distinction since 2013.
“The fact this is Alec’s last year in charge will be up front and centre in everything we do this season,” Gareth Batty, Surrey’s head coach, said this summer. “There are very few true greats in any sport but Alec has been a great player for Surrey and England and is still, right now, a great director of cricket, and I think it really adds to our desire to win the title again because all of us, players and staff, owe Stewie so much.”
County championship cricket resumed on Thursday after the longest break — 49 days — since it commenced in its officially recognised format in 1890. Not that Hampshire’s match against Essex, a meeting of the fourth and third-placed counties in division one, was worth the wait, for there was no play at all. Elsewhere, however, there were wickets for Somerset, acquired through necessity as they restarted 23 points behind Surrey, the leaders (writes Ivo Tennant).
Surrey were the champions in 1890 and are well set to become so again this year. At Edgbaston, second-placed Somerset put Warwickshire in but were thwarted to some extent by Rob Yates and Jacob Bethell both scoring half-centuries. They were 277 for six by the close.
It was a day for fielding first in several instances, although that decision did not profit Nottinghamshire. Alex Lees and Ben McKinney, playing in only his second championship match, both made centuries for Durham in a total of 393 for five, putting on 189 for the first wicket in 45 overs.
That revered hard-hitting batsman from the northeast, Colin Milburn, would have relished such quick scoring. More so than the struggles of his old county, Northamptonshire, against the Middlesex attack at one of the finest of the remaining out grounds, Merchant Taylors’ School. They too were put in and finished a day curtailed by bad light on 167 for seven, Emilio Gay making 42.
At Worcester, Kent, likewise given first innings, were bowled out for 171, chiefly by Joe Leach, who took six for 52. Worcestershire are 34 runs behind with eight first-innings wickets intact.
The best figures of the day came in the second division at Derby, where Zak Chappell took six for 47 against Glamorgan, including the wickets of three upper-order batsmen for ducks. After four years on the fringes at Trent Bridge, this tall seam bowler attempted to revitalise his career through moving counties last year. Run-making was possible, as Harry Came illustrated when Derbyshire went in, finishing with an unbeaten half-century.
There was a century for Ian Holland, who once went in first for Hampshire and now opens for Leicestershire, against Gloucestershire at Bristol. Tom Alsop, one of his old colleagues, struck an unbeaten 84 in a lowly Sussex total of 187 for nine against Yorkshire. This was at Scarborough, another treasured out ground. It is all too apparent at this time of year how few remain in a championship schedule which would have been quite foreign to the ancients of 1890.