My earliest happiest cricketing memory is the 1985 Ashes. I remember David Gower, in his gilded, silky pomp (732 runs at 81.33, including a 166, a 157 and a 215). I remember an authoritative Graham Gooch, my first sight of him in England colours. I remember Andrew Hilditch, happily hooking. I remember Richard Ellison, scything his way through those forlorn Aussies (seventeen wickets in only two tests).
I do not remember who the England coach was.
Think back to your fondest memories of yesteryear. Sabina Park, 1990. Illingworth, Boycott and Snow reclaiming the urn in 1970/71. Perhaps Len Hutton’s side’s triumph in 1954/55. What do you recall of the England coach?
The Oval, 2005. Is your abiding memory Duncan Fletcher?
Time was that England’s coach was exactly that – a coach. His role was to help players fulfil their potential: to nurture, to empower, to refine skills. He was not a football-style manager – a supremo or gaffer – whose place in the hierarchy was pre-eminent or sacrosanct. His job was technical, and his work took place in the background. The captain was in charge. But even he was subject to the vicissitudes of form and fortune.
Somewhere along the line, during the last twenty years, the coach’s role has undergone mission creep. The process probably began under Ray Illingworth, accelerated with Fletcher, but transmogrified beyond recognition during the tenure of Andy Flower. Flower’s title, significantly, was not coach – but Team Director.
Our coach is now a full-blown manager in all but name, not an aide but a boss. How did this change occur?
The Team Director now sets the tone; he micro-manages; each player is accountable to him. He sits atop the hierarchy. Was this change a deliberate, thought-through strategy, or did it happen haphazardly and without what the Dark Lord would call “due diligence”?
It is an axiom of working life that power is taken, not given. Ambitious employees deliberately seek to expand their territory and take credit for as much of what goes right as possible. Consciously or otherwise, did Flower – and maybe Fletcher before him – actively and unilaterally expand the coach’s dominion?
During the last week, no official Team England figure has saluted Kevin Pietersen’s record, defended him from the avalanche of criticism his book aroused or pledged to investigate his claims of malpractice.
In fairness, he, and no one else, chose to publish an autobiography which viscerally lambasted several of his ex-colleagues. Cook’s response was normal and human. But what’s striking is the effort expended in defending not simply Andy Flower’s personal credentials, but his primacy to the England narrative.
This has come both from journalists and insiders who feel very strongly about redressing the balance. They particularly want to rebut Pietersen’s argument that Flower should take little credit for the side’s achievements. He told Paul Hayward that:
Andy Flower is a master at managing upwards. He’s got Giles Clarke in his pocket. You know what, Giles Clarke probably thought – he’s getting results, so he must be doing something right. But he was just very lucky to have players who matured into great players. My grandmother could have coached that Australia side. My son could have coached our side, two years ago, three years ago.
Appearing on Five Live on Sunday, David Collier, until recently the ECB’s chief executive, said:
In any professional sport certain managers and leaders do have intensity from time to time. People that we respect as some of the greatest football managers have been known to be fairly robust in dressing rooms.
Andy Flower is an intensely passionate man, he has the most superb integrity.
There is no way we could have had the success over his long and successful period if there hadn’t been huge respect within that dressing room.
On Saturday, Alastair Cook also spoke to the BBC:
I am incredibly proud…to have played under Andy Flower as coach. I have known Andy since the Essex dressing room, when he took me under his wing as a player. Obviously, your relationship changes as a head coach and captain and I only have respect for him as a man, and as a coach.
He was an amazing coach for our side. Chatting to some of the guys about it, they feel the same. A lot of the success was down to his drive and determination to make us a tough England side.
Here’s what Andrew Strauss had to say:
Andy Flower is a guy of complete integrity. If you look at [his] record as coach, it’s second to none. He’s achieved phenomenal things, and rightly should be regarded as one of England’s great coaches.
Flower had no agenda except to try all within his power, however unpalatable his methods to Pietersen, to keep England at the top of the cricketing tree.
In the Spectator, Peter Oborne apportions Flower squarely with England’s successes during his reign:
Pietersen gives no credit whatever to Flower as a manager. The reader would not know that he took England to the top of the ICC rankings. That omission undermines belief in Pietersen, and he does not sustain his biggest charge that Flower actually wanted to deny England the benefit of their biggest matchwinning batsman. This would make Flower not only a bad manager but vindictive and irrational.
The Independent’s Stephen Brenkley – who describes Pietersen supporters as “odious” – goes the furthest:
England teams coached by Andy Flower under three different captains claimed the Ashes three times in a row, became the No 1 Test side in the world, came back from behind to beat India in India, thrillingly won a major limited-overs tournament for the first time and, in all, won 12 and lost three of their 18 Test series. It was a handsome record which unravelled slightly (all right, a lot) when the team ran into the aforementioned Johnson last winter.
The compelling diatribe published by Kevin Pietersen rewrites this view of a coach. When England prevailed in Australia in 2010-11, for the first time in 24 years, it seemed to be a magical sporting achievement. It was a privilege to witness a heroic team perform heroic deeds helped by the guidance of a coach who left nothing to chance, who planned and prepared meticulously.
Pietersen, speaking directly to Flower, says later on in the book: “Bad times are when coaches prove themselves. In bad times you were the problem, not the solution.”
This will not do. It really will not.
In a separate piece, he argues that:
[Flower is] an estimable coach and admirable man whose stoic silence in the face of repeated personal attacks – starting but not finishing with the book – speaks volumes. That he is earnest and stubborn in his principles should not be doubted but they are traits which should be lauded rather than reviled.In the welter of wholly discomfiting and unnecessary personal abuse, it has been too easily overlooked how successful England were under his tutelage. Too conveniently forgotten as well how important his role was in the re-assimilation of Pietersen to the ranks in 2009 and in his reintegration in 2012.
He is the sort of man Pietersen could only dream of being.
The same themes recur: integrity, selflessness; success. Time and again in these arguments, England’s three successive Ashes series, the victory in India, and the T20 World Cup, are personally attributed to Flower.
Sceptics will immediately point out that Flower also oversaw numerous disasters: 0-3 against Pakistan in early 2012; 0-2 versus South Africa later that year; a whitewash in Australia.
To what extent should Flower receive the praise for triumphs and blame for disasters? There is a risk of exaggeration either way, and results have to figure somewhere in the quantification of a coach’s performance.
Clearly, Flower didn’t sit around idly. His supporters will cite his attention to detail, the thoroughness of his preparation; the focus and discipline he instilled. And times have changed. With England forever on the road, and under central contracts, the players now require more in the way of stewardship than a few throw-downs.
But Flower did not score any runs for England, nor took any wickets. He never took the field. He was neither captain nor chair of selectors. By comparison, none of Australia’s achievements in the late 1990s and early 2000s are seen as the work of John Buchanan.
What does seem likely is that Flower’s sense of status and importance – his ersatz empire-building – transcended the proper and historic boundaries of the coach’s remit. He redefined his role and turned himself into a self-styled supremo. Steve Harmison’s anecdote, from his article on Sunday, is telling:
There is some truth in the accusation, made in [Pietersen’s] book, that Andy ran it like a dictatorship. Last year, Stuart Broad openly admitted in an interview that every time Andy’s number came up on his phone, he would s*** himself.
His immediate thought was what had he done wrong, why was he in trouble. When he came to the conclusion that he was OK, then he’d pick up. And this is England’s T20 captain and a star bowler. Stuart was scared of the coach. That’s not good. How did the younger guys feel?
The evidence which emerges from the dossier argues against Pringle’s assertion that Flower “had no agenda except to keep England at the top of the cricketing tree”. On the contrary, and besides his obsession with petty misdemeanours, he appears to hold in very high regard the respect and deference his status conferred. Axiomatically, sedition against him as an individual – in whatever context – was an attack on the team.
Remember, the following is not hearsay, but from the ECB themselves:
Immediately following England’s fourth day defeat in the Fourth Test, AF encouraged Alistair Cook [sic] (AC) to lead a team meeting without team management in attendance to try and
rally the squad before the final Test.Meeting between AF and KP in AF’s hotel room (at AF’s request following AF finding out that KP saying to AC, MP and others that AF shouldn’t be the coach any longer):
KP ranted, saying GS is a “c*nt”, the team was “sh*t” and having a go at AF and his coaching.
‐ AF told KP at the end of the meeting that he was amazed that after 7 years of working together and AF bending over backwards for KP, that KP would talk to AF like that and be so incredibly disloyal as to try to get rid of AF like that behind AF’s back. KP then left AF’s hotel room.
Note: AF did not speak to KP during the Sydney Test (or for the rest of
the Tour).
Had Flower turned into Alex Ferguson? Was he ranking deference and personal loyalty ahead of on-field performance?
A common (but exaggerated) criticism of Pietersen was that he fell out with coaches. Is this such a terrible sin? Surely players are far more important than coaches, and isn’t it the latter’s job to earn the respect of senior players, not just expect them to fall into line like privates on a parade ground because of the stripes on their arm?
It was not Kevin Pietersen’s job to keep Andy Flower happy. Players should be assessed on the basis of their performances, and ability to play together, not their obedience to a coach whose ego could not withstand dissent.
If Flower was indeed a coach, his job was to coach – and whatever was said in a private players’ meeting was none of his business. If he saw himself as a manager, who gave him the green light to build a personality cult? Brenkley’s account of the angry phone calls he took from Flower suggests a man whose public reputation featured high in his priorities.
It is unhealthy to portray Flower as the star of the England show from 2009 to 2014. And it does not belittle his hard work and diligence to argue that he was an accessory and a functionary.
Inflating his centrality to Team England, and depicting him as the axle around which the team revolved, does no one any favours. Flowerism diminished the England captaincy, infantilised the players, corroded diversity, and outlawed freedom of thought. He constructed a power base of such dimensions he became inviolate from scrutiny or assessment from above.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Peter Moores should read the dossier.
And who went and blabbed to Flower?
According to the ECB, Prior and Cook (but I think you already knew that).
Is it such a terrible sin to fall out with coaches? Yes it is in my opinion. Maybe not a dastardly sin, but a significant one.
Players should try to get on with coaches and teammates, and if there are personality clashes (as there clearly were between Flower and KP) then both parties have a responsibility to be civil and tolerate each other. From KP’s book it seems to me that he was unnecessarily belligerent without actually thinking about the consequences of his actions. He talks about Strauss coming to compromises and managing relationships as if it was a bad thing (because he wasn’t constantly saying what he thinks). This is an incredibly naive attitude in my opinion.
I’m not saying KP should have been sacked at all, but he certainly played a part in the deterioration of his relationship with Flower. Neither Flower nor KP come out of things smelling of roses. Both men come across as intransigent and inflexible.
KP mentions in his book instances where Flower leaked to the press about KP. That’s just poor and shows sign of a man struggling to keep his ‘numero uno’ status.
I think flower does deserve recognition for bring England back after Moores 1.0. But then again he left us no better.
One could ask, who did Flower bring into the team? Who has he developed? I can name a few players that have regressed under his command.
ECB and the press like to talk about the comprisons with Sir Alex. The other way of looking at it is, the Germans coach, Mr Lowe. Until this WC win, he had been to finals and simi finals. Yet he was regarded as a failure, simply because the generation of players were regarded so highly. The same could be and is said by KP about flower. The setting was primed when he took over as such that the core of the team hit a peak and success was inevitable, epically Ashes, where Australia was rebuilding.
Unless Pietersen has simply invented it all, his book makes it clear that he was leaked against on a systematic basis. There is strong evidence that private conversations between him and Flower ended up in the papers. Flower has questions to answer on this front.
What evidence?
Paul Newman outlined most of the contents of the dossier a day before it was leaked (and some of it, earlier). Many of its elements could originally only have been known (or known to be an issue) by Flower.
Pietersen’s private conversation with Flower about James Taylor is another example.
Flower brought in Trott, Bresnan, Finn, Root, Morgan, Bairstow, Patel, Stokes, Ballance, Kieswetter, Woakes, Buttler, Compton, Carberry, Taylor, Jordan, Lumb and Hales to name but a few. 34 players in total across all 3 forms of the game. Plenty have been successful.
Bell averaged 40 pre-2009 and almost 50 under Flower, Cook flourished as did Prior, Anderson, Swann and Broad, whatever you believe about the dressing room antics. Jimmy Anderson had been around since the World Cup of 2003, yet had been stuck behind Hoggard, Harmison, Flintoff, Jones and others in the pecking order – he also had his action meddled with – nobody seems to be castigating Fletcher for mistreatment of the man who’s breaking all England bowling records…..
As far as those who have regressed, the ‘prosecution’s’ prime examples tend to be Panesar, Finn and Compton.
Panesar was simply England’s second best spinner destined to play only when conditions demanded a partner for Swann. Is anybody seriously blaming his drunken antics on Andy Flower? Sussex saw fit to release him, and he had plenty of problems at Essex as well – his erratic behaviour is his responsibility and his alone.
Finn did suffer from a) being dropped during the Ashes tour in 2010-11 and b) his drastic loss of form in the last 18 months. Given that his replacement Tremlett made key contributions during the Ashes tour, I would say that it was a brave and successful selection decision. As for the loss of form, remember that Finn had a serious problem with his run up which required technical change. The shortened run up was tried and failed and he lost his rhythm and confidence. The fact is that something had to be done, and the coaching staff tried it. They got it wrong, but who’s to say a different approach would have fared any better?
I do feel that Compton got a rough deal, because I thought he showed enough form to warrant selection in the first ashes test last year. They chose to promote Root to open – based on the fact that root opened at county level and was seen as the long term option, can you say it was a terrible decision?
As for the others, have any of them really made a hard and fast case
There is only room for 11 players in the team – how often during Flower’s tenure can you say that he didn’t get the best 11 on the pitch?
Was Flower the perfect coach? Absolutely not. Did he do a lot of good things for England – absolutely. Between the Ashes victory of 05 and Flower being instated England won just 4 of 12 series with teams based around Strauss, Trescothick, Cook, Vaughan, Collingwood, Pietersen (at the height of his powers), Bell, Panesar, Harmison, Flintoff and Hoggard. That was a fairly serious team, yet their results are not in the same league as those under Flower’s direction.
It is common knowledge that Warne and Buchanan did not get along. At all.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/cricket/revealed-the-coach-shane-warne-hated-was-his-greatest-cricket-asset/story-e6frey50-1226597831549
The point is that Buchanan did not try to get rid of Warne even though the relationship was toxic. The article I linked suggests that Buchanan might have been deliberately winding Warne up to get good performances, but on the other hand it is possible that Buchanan knew that a team with Warne in it was better than a team without him.
“It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”
―Lyndon B. Johnson (on J. Edgar Hoover).
Where is Pietersen in regards to the ECB tent right now?
The real point is that Buchanan could not have dreamed of getting rid of Warne. Indeed it is telling that he has never responded to Warne’s repeated provocations. In part this says something about the personalities involved but it also reflects the fact that at least since Ian Chappell’s fight with Bradman in the late 70s, the players have been the dominant force in Australian cricket and the Captain has far more power than the Coach. Lehmann is probably the most influential Coach since Bobby Simpson but he doesn’t have the power to remove a successful player from the side – whereas Michael Clarke does (and has – Andrew Symonds and Simon Katich).
Which begs the question – why was Flower ever allowed to be in a position where he could sack one of the better players England had for no adequately explained reason?
You are correct in that Buchanan couldn’t have given Warne the boot even if he’d wanted to. The ACB would have reacted to fan pressure and sided with the player over the coach. That was because Warne’s talent was recognised and (here’s the kicker) valued.
The ECB seems to have recognised KP’s talent (the fact that they brought him back in after the “unforgivable” textgate rubbish suggests that) but they don’t appear to have valued it.
“Why was Flower ever allowed to be in a position where he could sack one of the better players England had for no adequately explained reason?”
That’s what we’ve all been asking for the last eight months.
Was Pietersen still one of England’s better players though Maxie? Throughout Flower’s time as coach, Bell, Cook and Trott were the basis on which England totals were founded – Pietersen’s innings, while memorable, were much less frequent. As a ODI batsman, he averaged 30 between 2009 and 2014, which is outside the top 10 of England batsmen.
SInce we’re on the subject of the Aussies, the Aussies moved out players like Taylor and Waugh sooner rather than later, when they thought their powers were in irreversible decline. Couldn’t the same be said of KP?
He top scored in the last series he played in. And he was not dropped because of his form.
Thanks for this, Culex, and it gets to the nub of the question. Cricket Australia had the good sense (albeit, a case of no shit, Sherlock) that Warne was vastly more important than Buchanan. The ECB thought a coach was more important than its best player.
Based on the last 5 years England’s best players were Cook, Bell, Swann and Anderson.
Simon Wilde’s idea that Pietersen’s fault may be excessive loyalty to certain coaches is worth repeating. Pietersen appears to have got on well with most who have coached him – Clive Rice, Rod Marsh, Duncan Fletcher, Graham Ford, Paul Terry and all his IPL coaches. Where he has had problems with a coach it seems sometimes to be a reaction to how a previous coach he loved was dismissed (certainly this applies to Rice/Newell at Notts and possibly Fletcher/Moores with England). If the new coach had an undistinguished playing record it sometimes also didn’t help – although Pietersen has got along with some such coaches and of course Flower’s distinguished playing record doesn’t seemed to have smoothed their relationship.
Wilde also makes a good point that Pietersen tends to evaluate people quickly and he is subsequently extremely reluctant to change his mind. Wilde links this to Pietersen’s batting and sees it as part of Pietersen’s determination to trust his instincts and not let self-doubt creep in.
These thoughts are offered as part of trying to understand the dynamic between the two – not to apportion blame. My main feeling at the moment is that it was all incredibly sad and that someone above Flower and Pietersen really ought to have banged their heads together at an early stage before both sides dug themselves too deeply into their trenches.
Don’t know what to say given the rant by Flower towards Brenkley. What surprises me is that Brenkley still doesn’t seem to see the proverbial wood from the trees.
Although I do agree in part with what James has said, it is still a management problem. Manager’s should manage effectively. If you have star players who are frightened of their managers it just does not bode well for anyone. You can’t have bullying like that from management. It achieves nothing. Yes KP was responsible for acting in a professional way. However when you are like a fish trying to swim upstream, it gets to become such a terrible strain. One can feel as though you are the only person seeing that this system is not working and not likely to work if it stays the same way. Frustration and resentment at having not been heard and not being respected. Resentment over a long period just builds and builds until everything gets out of hand.
In the last assessment that is a management problem. Yes of course an employee needs to be respectful, but respect has to work both ways. If respect is only one way then that is not management. If Stuart Broad’s mind blowing statement about his fear of phone calls coming from Flower is anything to go by then something is seriously wrong. No one comes away from this episode clean. At the end of the day management has to take responsibility for this terrible mess. What makes the ECB, Flower and Strauss look so bad is their inability to deal with such a situation and thereby takes the line to blame one player for all the ills and failure of the team.
When one is bullied (call it what you will) for a long period of time, it saps the lifeblood out of you. Constantly battling to be heard for yourself and for others drains your creativity, you abilities and talents often taking a serious nosedive. One can become listless, exhausted and forever tired and depressed. Seven years colleagues and myself were mercilessly bullied by a small clique. Five people had to take leave because they just couldn’t function. One driven to a nervous breakdown.
The question about how certain people move from being a piece in the greater puzzle to controlling and becoming dictatorial happens when management do nothing about it. Especially if the “manager” has been “allowed” to continue with a “new hat” in order to bring people in line and keep them in line. Working by numbers and stats and the latest ideas? On the surface seems to be a good way of working. But if all this is just a means to check up on people, ensure they do what they are told and keep in line and say nothing but do what they are told, then you do not take people with you. In fact the opposite can happen. Seven years myself and my colleagues had to suffer. Then a new “broom” was brought in and definitely swept clean. How did that happen? Well upper management changed and wanted to know why so many people were going off sick with nervous complaints? Opened up channels of discussion for all members of the staff. Two managers were gone in a matter of weeks: one moved sideways and the Deputy manager resigned having been told she did not have the qualifications for the job. The new manager – who many of the staff wanted – was given the job. We wrote to upper management and said a mighty big “thank you”. One lady who was constantly bullied more than anyone else had the most fabulous resume. She was not allowed to move up as she should have been. Jealousy was part of the equation. She had more experience and expertise that the Deputy Manager thus “keep her down!” New manager: “let her shine!” My former colleague is a different person and has her own job with her skills being seen and she is now a bright star. The Manager’s door is always open and she always listens and acts appropriately.
ECB, Flower and Selectors have to go. Simples.
Round of applause Maxi…….This is one of my favourite subjects.
The over importance of the coach. Ian Chappell once said “coaches are for driving around the countryside in.” And in international sport I agree. Football club management is different because you buy and sell players, and oversee the youth system. The Alex Ferguson , Bob Paisley, Brian Clough figures.
The other difference is in cricket the captain has traditionally run the show. As Maxie said, somewhere the role of the coach has superseded that of the captain. There is now a conflict of interest. Both captain and coach are judged on performance. Fine when the team is winning. But who is accountable when the team loses? Both are on contracts that demand results. If a coach does not agree with the captain or his choices on the field, and the team loses the coach is in the firering line. It therefore follows he wants a yes man carrying out his orders.
There was very funny piece Nasser did to camera on the 2007 Ashes tour. England were already 4-0 down. Nasser explained the 11 man Aussie team would come out of the hotel. (They would take turns carrying the kit bag) and climb into a small mini van, which would set off for the ground. Shane Warne sitting in the back with the window open and cigarette hanging outside the window. Then a large air conditioned 52’seat coach would pull up. Out would come the England team including reserves. There was a man to carry the bags, the chef, the phycologist, the dietrician, the fitness coach, the batting coach, the bowling coach, the fielding coach, and the main coach. Look at the score.
Coaching is important, but particularly in the early youth days. Once you have become a top level player surely only mild tinkering is required. If you don’t know where to bowl,why are you in the test team? All these back room staff have taken away players responsibility for making their own decisions. Look how many bowlers have been ruined by coaches. Illingworth tried to remodel Devon Malcoms bowling action in the middle of a series in South Africa. Michael Atherton who was captain talks about it in his autobiograhy.
As for Flower he became not just coach but dictator. There is also the issue of city boys who now run sport. They are more interested in money and sponsorship. Players must be obedient or they might upset the sponsors. They must be kept in line. Players who won’t toe the corporate line will be removed.
Thanks, Mark, and I agree wholeheartedly with almost all of your own points. The degree of micro-management does seem to suffocated the players to the extent that they can no longer make their own decisions.
In terms of player development, during the last few years the Flower regime seems to have had more misses than hits, Finn being only the most glaring example. What should we deduce from the fact that, in the 2014 summer, the best cricket (Anderson and Root excepted) came from Ballance, Buttler and Moeen – who were playing their own game, barely touched yet by the Flower/Moores axis.
There are an awful lot of hits though Maxie….
Bell transformed under Flower into England’s best batsman of the last few years, Cook scored hundreds for fun, Trott was a great success, Anderson, who had been around since 2003 transformed into England’s greatest wicket taker, Broad became a major force, Swann, who had also been around for a while, became the world’s most effective spin bowler. He introduced the under-rated Bresnan, who made a succession of key contributions, and Prior transformed from a dodgy keeper who could bat into one of the world’s best glove-men.
That’s 7 or 8 key members of England’s success over the last 5 years, not even mentioning the captain, who played a key role .
Have I missed anyone? He also introduced Stokes, Root and Ballance to test cricket.
Whatever his relationship with Pietersen, and whatever you think of his methods, you can’t just ignore all the positive things that happened during Flower’s tenure.
Maybe one of the reasons for KP’s unhappiness within the Flower set up is that he actually wasn’t the kingpin any more? For the first 4/5 years of his international career KP was the main man, scored bucketloads more runs than anybody else – since 2009, his 100s have been spectacular, but no less important have been the more regular contributions of the rest of the top order.
What irritates me about these arguments is that England is not all about revolving around one player – no player is bigger than the team, and the less glamorous contributions of the likes of Cook, Trott and Bresnan have been as vital as the KP spectaculars, yet Flower is castigated on here as a failure because he fell out with one player, and if some of KP’s belligerence towards Flower is to be believed, doesn’t sound like the animosity was a one way street.
I find it very hard to imagine that either Nasser Hussain or Michael Vaughan would have tolerated the kind of coaching structure we have now, with all the power resting in the coach’s hands and not theirs. Indeed, Vaughan had a problem with Moores for precisely that first time around.
Indeed, given that, it’s hardly surprising an Alastair Cook is then chosen to be England captain. And equally unsurprising to see England clueless as to a strategy in the field, and then come out after a break and adopt a brand new one. It hardly encourages independent thought.
“Vaughan had a problem with Moores for precisely that first time around”.
So the response was…let’s have more of it.
Let’s put it a slightly different way: can you imagine the current ECB appointing Nasser Hussain or Michael Vaughan to the captaincy?
Hussain would have already been discarded as a disruptive influence.
Kevin Pietesen is a difficult character to be sure. But it is the management’s responsibility to nurture potential and make all members of the team feel at home.
If the management rules by fear and creates too many rules and regulations, or if the management turns a blind eye to cliques and bullying, or if the management spies on players and creates dossiers of their real or imaginary wrongdoings, or if the management briefs its media pals against a player or leaks documents trying to show how bad a certain player is, then it is not the player but the management which is at fault.
Andy Flower and the ECB are guilty of all these things. If they have even an ounce of honesty and integrity between them they should emerge from their hideouts, admit their failures and resign for the good of English cricket.
*Round of applause*
who exactly is neil burns?
http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/789291.html
Neil Burns is mentor/coach/advisor to Nick Compton and Monty Panesar
Namedrop alert – I once played in a charity match with Neil, and it is my solemn but eggy duty to report that he is a very nice bloke and excellent raconteur.
It would be fascinating to get his private thoughts on why both Monty and Compton are now estranged from Team England.
It just gets worse and worse doesn’t it? If Flower saw himself as a Team Director then he should have accepted that it was his duty to front up to the Press and not leave it to a member of his staff to take the flak. And, let us not forget that there are many cases of successful football managers who would let the players face the press when they had done well, to take the plaudits and adulation, but, when the players or team had not performed well, the manager himself would face the press – Ferguson and Mourinho do it quite regularly and I believe that Clough did too. It is as if Flower wanted to bask in the adulation but not face the tough questions. Such as why the 3 tall fast bowlers he took to Australia in 2012 were so useless…or why there was no proper reserve wicket-keeper, or why Anderson and Broad had to play despite a cracked rib and a chronic knee injury, or why there was no plan to get Haddin out, or why Panesar was so short of confidence, or why they had not noticed that Swann was bowling through pain. There was some suggestion of fallibility in the case of Trott but the following question then needs to be addressed.
To pick up on Gnasher MacGlashan’s assertion, on the Switch Hit last week, that England did well to get KP to play as many Tests as he did, then this is an acknowledgement that the ECB and, by implication the PCA, are content for England cricketers to play for 10 years and then spend the remaining 40-50 years of their lives managing chronic injuries. This is surely an inhumane approach. It might have been acceptable in Victorian times but this is the 21st century – sweating your labour as if they are slaves, until their limbs drop off, is just not acceptable anymore.
And as Mark says above, if coaches are to be lauded for success, what happens when they fail? Who was the last England coach to be sacked for poor results? Even Moores was reinstated once the coast was clear.
Im guessing that Mickey Stewart was the first proper full time coach /manager for England. I don’t recall much good coming from that era.
Mickey Stewart’s first tour as England coach was Australia 1986-87, England’s last away Ashes victory before 2010-11
Micky Stewart’s overall Test record as England coach:
P58 W12 D26 L20
Winning just 20.7% of games in charge is the second worst record of any England coach (Keith Fletcher’s 13% is the worst).
(Collated records of England coaches aren’t easy to find but this was from a table in the DT published in February. There was some despite if it was entirely accurate but I don’t think Micky Stewart’s record was one that was disputed. I’m not posting this to ‘have a go’ at him but I dislike the recent tendency to assess records by Ashes’ performances alone).
His second Test series away was to Pakistan. We all now how that went. You might want to read the “Steward Mickey, Malcolm Devon and sacked again ” chapter in David Gowers autobiography to see how the next tour to Australia went John.
Mickey Stewart is an interesting illustration of the issue, because my memory of that period is that he was not credited with either success or failure – he had a simpler and purer role as coach, not manager.
In those days, the chair of selectors fronted up as the management’s representative. Ted Dexter was the man in the firing line when things went wrong. By contrast, nowadays, James Whitaker is almost anonymous.
Stewart’s tenure encompassed extreme ups and downs. Geoffrey Boycott, though, makes a pithy point about him. At the end of the 1989 season, after a walloping in the Ashes, and with the West Indies to come the following spring, Stewart brought in Boycott as a specialist if unofficial batting coach.
Unsurprisingly, Boycott takes credit for what happened next: we won at Sabina Park, and batted very well for the majority of the series. He has a point, and his view is that Stewart was ‘big enough’ to realise another brain, a batting scholar, was needed to turn things around. Other coaches, Boycott says, might have been too wary of his ego and renown, or too proud to seek help.
Recognising your own limitations and being prepared to seek advice is perhaps one of the most powerful abilities a manager can have. Far too many see it as a sign of weakness. It isn’t.
Posted earlier on Dmitri’s blog.
I’ve seen no comment on one of the most unpleasant anecdotes in the book. I’m not surprised that the old media, which eats out of Flower’s hand, doesn’t mention it at all, but I haven’t seen reference to it on the blogs either. Apologies if I missed it. I’ve had a stressful week and some things I have read at top speed while trying to do several things at once.
You may remember that before the Winter Ashes, Pietersen was given compassionate leave to arrive late in Australia so as to attend the funeral of a close friend. That friend was Jon Cole-Edwardes, whom Pietersen describes as “my best friend since our childhood together in South Africa” and “another brother to me.” KP’s loyalty to his oldest friends and his family is a constant theme throughout the book (not that you’d know it from the reviews).
A year before, after so-called text-gate, before “reintegration,” KP held a golf day at Tring to raise funds for the JCE Trust, a charity set up by Cole-Edwardes, who was dying from a rare form of eye cancer. This took place between two of England’s one-day games against South Africa in September, for which KP was not, of course, picked.
Pietersen invited some of the England players to join him in Tring (he doesn’t say who or how many).
Chris on Dmitri’s blog comments:
Since I posted the above, I found this on a messageboard (posted by Far Foreign Field on 23 July, i.e. months before publication of KP’s book):
Clive I read that on Dmitri’s site. It is quite appalling; both the incident, and the media black out of it. I’m sick and tired of this constant drum beat of “integrity, integrity integrity” from the PR department of the ECB.
How can they say this when they don’t report these issues in the book. There is enough in KPs book, and what has been said by other parties to show that Flower was not acting with integrity.
But I thought Flower was a man of integrity, Clive?
Thanks for your excellent research on this.
You may have seen my tweets tonight about Henry Olonga saying that Zimbabwe dressing room atmosphere was “cold” under Flower’s captaincy and also saying his man-management “wasn’t great” at that time. Ironically, the context in which he does so (an interview of four years ago, at the time of the publication of Olonga’s autobiography) assumes that Flower is a changed man as England coach (for which Olonga obviously has no first-hand evidence):
Source: http://tinyurl.com/o5eepmz Mel Gibson is occasionally useful!
N.B. As Nick explained on The Full Toss the other day, Olonga had no idea at the time that he was risking his life by taking part in the black armband protest. Flower had his exit strategy and future life planned, Henry had to leave the country in a hurry when a Mugabe minister told him: “Just you wait until the world cup is over.”
Olonga went along with Flower because he assumed nothing would happen to Zimbabwe’s captain and greatest player or to its first black cricketer. An uncharitable interpretation would be that Flower used him for his own purposes. (Anti-Mugabe protest would look much better if a black man was taking part in it, forestalling allegations of racism or disgruntled white privilege). Nick does point out that Olonga was a grown man and made his own decision, but I agree with him that Flower does not come away looking as noble as we are usually led to believe.
I wonder how many England players would bite your hand off if you offered them a coach like Boof, who encourages his team to enjoy themselves and doesn’t stifle their personalties. Pietersen certainly contrasts Flower with the Australian coach in his book. Lehmann got match-winning performances out of David Warner– Mickey Arthur got a guy who throws a punch in a bar.
The only player I can think of who would prefer Flower or Moores to Lehmann is Alastair Cook, who needs someone to tell him what to do all the time.
Pietersen will never return — our press has said so — but it’s the future free spirits and entertainers that will be the real victims. And the dwindling ranks of England supporters.
It’s difficult to imagine that the Moores/Downton axis will ever select someone whose personality they cannot control and whose sense of self they cannot suppress. The legacy of Flowerism is that obedience and uniformity counts for more than anything else. God help Buttler when they get their teeth into him properly.
From the outside, it looks like Lehman empowered Clarke to restore his side’s self-belief and give them licence to play their natural games. Australia batted adventurously in the winter series – and at times, especially at Brisbane and Adelaide, quite luckily. They played instinctive, aggressive cricket – rather than just following the computer print-out.
And worth noting that England under Fletcher also batted that way from time to time. The first innings at Edgbaston springs to mind, when they went absolutely berserk and carted Australia all round the park.
Can you imagine the current England EVER doing that? In recent times we’ve only ever seen the odd individual take that approach, never, not once, the whole team.
I spent much of the New Zealand tour screaming at the television at how negative and frankly terrified the England batting order was.
Pietersen’s 71 off 76 balls at Edgbaston was a crucial innings that seldom gets mentioned. He played second fiddle to Flintoff in a way that his “but he’s selfish” detractors think he can’t. When England were collapsing in the second dig he hit Warne for two ridiculous sixes and was only sawn off by a poor umpiring decision (and great ‘catch’ by Gilchrist).
Well done Dmitri for the story about KPs friend. How sad is it that something so fine could have been ignored. How sad also that those who went to play were chastised by Flower. The piece about Henry Olongo – who is a very humble guy – could be used to so badly by Flower. Just awful. What concerns me though is that Flower is still in there. Ruling our youngsters. What a very terrible mess.
‘Pietersen will never return — our press has said so — but it’s the future free spirits and entertainers that will be the real victims. And the dwindling ranks of England supporters.’
How true Clive, and how very sad.
Well…it looks like nothing is going to change in the short term so the best therapy is to start watching cricket again instead of talking about the same issues over and over again. I hear the West Indies Vs India is hotting up nicely – naturally I shall be supporting The Windies. Also, living in N.Z I get to follow the dynamic, youthful Blackcaps. If I was back in the U.K I would watch the odd game at Glamorgan I suppose but like many I can’t bring myself to support the current team and find myself actively willing them on to lose – despite being excited and encouraged by the young talent like Butler, stokes and Ballance. I fear for the future if the game though with Downton, Giles Clarke et al in charge. Great ready, this blog. Keep up the good work.
Only this year – and never before – have I heard England supporters saying they wanted the team to lose. I really hope that opinion formers start to realise just what a common view this is.
Thanks for your kind comments.
It troubles me. It’s easy to say of course, but basic desire to see England succeed tends to cut in. On one or two occasions I found myself genuinely hoping England wouldn’t do it. I’ve never felt that before. Not in any sport – not even with the football team.
If he was in post 100 years ago, one could see Flower / Clarke getting rid of Sydney Barnes for even more spurious reasons.
This is deja vu for me – when Lamb and Botham we’re excluded in the Summer of 1986 – the young, callow 16-Year-Old in me was really pleased, ashamedly, when England lost to both New Zealand and India 1-0. Nowadays, I wouldn’t go as far as that, but victory and defeat have left me with a supreme feeling of indifference as to how the mighty AC and his lackeys’ perform – never felt that way about any other National Team before and since!