London, September 13: Andrew Flintoff has followed the footsteps of Australian all-rounder Andrew Symonds and is giving serious consideration to become a freelance cricketer.
According to Flintoff’s manager Andrew Chandler, the talismanic all-rounder, who has announced his retirement from Test cricket after his side’s Ashes triumph, has already received a number of offers despite his knee injury won’t allow him to play for at least the next six months.
”He’ll play for Chennai (Super Kings in the IPL), he might play for an Australian team, a South African team, maybe one in the West Indies,” said Chandler. ”If he hadn’t have been injured he would have probably played in December-January in Australia. And then at the end of January, early February in South Africa. I was already negotiating with them. We were negotiating with South Australia and the Durban team, the Nashua Dolphins. And there’s been an offer from Northern Transvaal (Northerns) as well,” he told ‘The Observer’.
Out of action for months due to disciplinary issues, Symonds is also eyeing several Twenty20 opportunities around the world and Flintoff is believed to be taken the Australian all-rounder’s route.
Flintoff is heading to Dubai for spending three months there in order to recover from his right knee surgery.
The 31-year-old is, however, aiming to make his comeback to the national side during England’s one-day tour of Bangladesh next February. On Friday, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) offered Flintoff an incremental contract as they hope that he will play a key role in England’s limited-over sides when fit and has stated that he wants to play until the 2015 World Cup.
But England coach Andy Flower had said his players could take part in only three weeks of the 45-day IPL next year if they toured Bangladesh, which means that Flintoff, the joint highest-paid player in the IPL along with Kevin Pietersen this year, could stand to lose about half of his 1.55m dollar fee by going to Bangladesh.
However, Chandler made it clear that there was no clause in Flintoff’s central contract which will prevent the him from playing all IPL matches. ”I’m not saying he’s not going to play for England because he probably will do,” Chandler said. ”But he’s definitely going to play for different teams during the year. The England contract does not state anything about not being able to play IPL or anything like that,” he added.
—–Agencies