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Andrew Flintoff more excited than Northern Superchargers players in Hundred head coach role

Andrew Flintoff is “raring to go” for his first head coach role and will be “at his happiest” when his Northern Superchargers play Trent Rockets on Friday night. That is according to Kyle Hogg, Flintoff’s assistant at the Superchargers and his right-hand man ever since they met as teenagers making their way at Lancashire.

“I was around Lancs as a 16-year-old playing in the second team, and he’d have been 19 or 20,” Hogg told ESPNcricinfo. “I don’t want to say he took me under his wing – but he probably did, really. He looked after me in the dressing room and we’ve been close friends for about 25 years, which is scary. He’s never changed one bit from the first day I met him to today.”

Hogg, who has worked as a pathway coach at Lancashire and is an assistant coach at the Thunder women’s team, was asked late last year if he would be interested in working with Flintoff in the Hundred. They have recently worked together on the BBC series Field of Dreams and Hogg did not need much convincing: “Any time he comes calling, you’ve never turning him down.”

Flintoff has been working in England’s white-ball set-up as an assistant coach and has been mentioned as a potential successor to Matthew Mott. But Hogg played those links down, saying: “He’s been in TV for the last 15 years. This is his first time in cricket, so I guess it’s, see how he finds it. What happens in the future, who knows?

“But at the moment, he loves being part of cricket again… He went from being a cricketer to, every time you switch a TV on, he was doing something different. But he’s never changed once. He’s got his core group of friends who have always been there, forever. He’s had a tough few years, and it’s great to see him back in a cricket environment.”

The Superchargers are light on players, so much so that their strength and conditioning coach took part in Wednesday’s practice match against the South Asian Cricket Academy. Harry Brook and Ben Stokes are with England’s Test squad, Nicholas Pooran and Mitchell Santner are at Major League Cricket and Reece Topley will miss at least a week with a finger injury. Matthew Potts and Dillon Pennington will, at least, be made available by England.

Brook is due to captain but Matthew Short, the Australian opener, will deputise for two games after leaving MLC early. “The Superchargers showed some faith in me, retaining me for this year, and I thought, ‘al lright, I’ll commit to these guys 100 percent,” Short told ESPNcricinfo on Thursday, barely 24 hours after flying into the UK from Dallas. “It’s a bloody fun tournament.”

Short had sorted his retention for 2024 before Flintoff’s appointment but said he is excited to work with him. “He’s been great: he’s probably even more excited than the players at the moment. He loves to be on this side of the fence here at Headingley. I’m sure everyone is going to get around Freddie and help him out. We love having him around.”

At the T20 World Cup, where he was a travelling reserve, Short asked England’s players about Flintoff’s characteristics. “From what I’ve heard, he’s a bit of the modern-day coach now, especially in white-ball cricket. It feels like he’s got a lot of fun and a lot of energy to bring. He’s going to be nice and relaxed, and I’m sure it’s going to be a really nice environment.”

Their main discussions so far have been “around the whereabouts of all the players,” Short said, laughing. “How we want to play as a team is pretty hard to work out in a couple of days, so we’re going to have to learn on the go in that regard. The guys have played enough cricket to know what to do and know what they’re doing personally.”

Hogg spent 14 seasons playing for Lancashire’s first team and admitted it felt strange to be in the home dressing at Headingley, the home ground of their fierce rivals Yorkshire. “It is probably hard to get your head around it,” he said. “But we’ve come in and felt like this is our home, which is really good. We want this to be our fortress.

“[Flintoff] would have played here a lot more than I have over the years. He said even playing for England, sometimes you’d get a bit of grief being a Lancastrian which is part and parcel of it. But as everybody knows with Fred, anything he does, he does it 110%. He’s more excited than probably anybody: he is raring to go.

“Cricket is what he loves, that’s the bottom line. He loves the preparation and everything that goes with it, and tomorrow night, when we get going, he’ll be at his happiest… he’ll be the same as he is in all walks of life. He’ll want the lads to give it everything, [just like] how he played his cricket. He’ll be there for all the players, and he’ll want them to enjoy it.”

Matt Roller is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98

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