http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricke ... learn.html
Expressing surprise at Andy Flower’s accomplishments has become a futile exercise. He simply exceeds expectations for fun. Watching him bat as a youngster, only the most prescient could have foreseen that one day he would be ranked the No 1 batsman in the world.
As for seeing him tread warily, reluctantly even, out to the West Indies last year as temporary coach, Nostradamus himself would have been proud to predict a man capable of coaching England to their first ever global one-day trophy (the Twenty20 World Cup) and then a home Ashes victory.
Now to win the Ashes Down Under? The World Cup that follows? A knighthood?
As I say, nothing would surprise. It is a remarkable story. All the more remarkable given that in his first Test of audition in the Caribbean, England were bowled out for 51. It was an utter humiliation. It would have broken lesser men.
But Flower is used to prospering in adversity; averaging more than 50 for a middling Zimbabwe side had seen to that.
So the following morning he faced the music beside the pool at the Hilton Hotel in Kingston, Jamaica, and, frankly, he was brilliant.
Hugh Morris, the England and Wales Cricket Board’s managing director, was listening in the background. I reckon Flower got the permanent job that morning.
Afterwards one writer described it as “disarming” how lucid and honest Flower was. Flower did not shirk or equivocate. And, maturely, he gave the players a day off.
They then moved to Antigua where he immediately conducted a team meeting. Apparently it was feisty and frank. The players, even those such as Kevin Pietersen who were still tarring him with the brush of Peter Moores’s failed regime, were impressed.
Ian Bell was dropped, but to see him training like a boxer — always running ferociously at dawn – for the rest of the tour was evidence enough that a message had been given, and, more importantly, heard.
Flower’s way has always been to graft. As a player he was an assiduous trainer. I know that from experience.
During the early Nineties I spent a few winters playing and coaching in Zimbabwe.
Myself, Flower and his obsessive brother, Grant, became training partners at their national team-mate Malcolm Jarvis’s gym in central Harare. It was an eye-opener. These part-time Zimbabweans were clearly fitter than any county cricketer I had encountered.
And therein lay a crucial point. I once asked Flower about his greatest cricketing influences, and he reeled off a list of names from Zimbabwe cricket: John Traicos, Dave Houghton, Jarvis, Andy Waller and Andy Pycroft.
But it was not just their cricket that impressed. It was their life balance.
They managed to be professional at work and in sport, as well as find time for their families and have some fun too. “I thought the balance they found was amazing,” he said. “They taught me about the disciplines you need to succeed in sport and life.”
In other words they were not cosseted professional sportspeople without any wider experience of the world. Wonder why England went to Belgium and Germany recently?
Flower’s greatest strength, in my opinion, is his willingness to listen and learn.
He speaks to a multitude of people within the game, always asking questions, always searching for what he terms a “nugget” of information or knowledge. That has always been his mien.
For it is easy to forget that someone like him could not watch cricket on television as a youngster.
Indeed the only sport he saw on television in Zimbabwe was a round-up of action from around the globe in a programme called Transworld Sport.
It was broadcast every Thursday evening. And every Thursday evening I would somehow wangle an invitation for food in the Flower household in Mount Pleasant, Harare.
We would watch about five seconds of a cricket clip, and then some serious cricketing discussion would begin.
Any conversation with Flower’s father, “Wild Bill” as even his sons playfully call this schoolboy coach of some repute, is always lively and informative.
The technical knowledge was astounding. Little wonder that Andy says he always turned to his brother for such advice.
Neither was lavishly gifted technically, but instead worked hard at extending limitations and managing glitches. Such players usually make the best coaches.
In 1991 I sat with Flower (A) at the Harare South ground, watching Graeme Hick bat for Worcestershire against Mashonaland Country Districts.
Hick had faced just a couple of balls when Flower became very animated. He had noticed that Hick had changed to a closed bat face in his pick-up.
Hick had wintered with Queensland. “They like that in Australia for their bouncier pitches,” Flower commented. The sharpness and speed of observation was striking.
There was a brief flirtation with accountancy, but Flower was always going to coach.
Indeed he was employed as such, working in high-density schools, before he was paid to play cricket. And as a succession of coaches came to help the Zimbabwe national side – John Hampshire, Barry Dudleston, Carl Rackemann and Geoff Marsh to name a few – so Flower enhanced his knowledge.
His greatest influence as a coach, though? Moores.
To this day Flower is deeply regretful of the imbroglio that cost Moores his job with England. But as team director Flower would now never allow such a situation to develop. He is one tough cookie.
Citing his black armband protest with Henry Olonga at the 2003 World Cup as evidence of his bravery has almost become a cliché.
But that was not his bravest act. Braver still was to return to Zimbabwe after his side’s tournament had ended in South Africa.
Everyone, from family to security experts, advised him not to. “What could they [Robert Mugabe’s men] do to me?” he asked me at the time, “Kill me?” Well, yes.
As Flower has already said: there is nothing to fear in Australia. And he knows what he is talking about.
