By Julian Guyer
Birmingham - Australia captain Ricky Ponting has tried to put the boot into England by claiming star all-rounder Andrew Flintoff was "going downhill pretty quickly" in terms of fitness.
There are only three days between the third Ashes Test, which ended in a draw at Edgbaston on Monday, and the start of the fourth match at Headingley in Leeds on Friday.
The injury-prone Flintoff, who plans to bow out of Test cricket at the end of the series, has recently been struggling with a knee problem which requires extensive ice treatment.
'If he's fit to play, then we want to play him' He looked anything but hampered in the second Test at Lord's, where he bowled his side to a 115-run victory that put them 1-0 up in the five-match series. But at Edgbaston it was a different story with the ball for the 31-year-old Lancastrian who, although he top scored with 74 in England's only innings, did not take a single wicket.
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The burly Flintoff was powerless to prevent the Australians from comfortably forcing a draw by scoring the highest innings total of the match, thanks mainly to vice-captain Michael Clarke's unbeaten hundred and Marcus North's 96. At lunch on the final day, Ponting's side had still been in danger of losing a match despite two days, in effect, having been lost to bad weather.
The all-rounder nicknamed Fred bowled just 11 overs on Monday, after having clearly been less than 100 percent when running between the wickets during his innings.
Before this series, several pundits had said England's chances of regaining the Ashes depended almost exclusively on both batting kingpin Kevin Pietersen and Flintoff staying fully fit throughout. Pietersen's series was over after the Lord's Test due to an Achilles injury that necessitated an operation, and Ponting on Monday questioned whether the hosts could absorb Flintoff's absence as well.
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