England Lions tour of UAE, 2016.

[hopeforthebest]

Can anyone explain to me in a relatively short paragraph exactly what this dislike/hatred of Andy Flower is based upon. Staying too long as coach is hardly his fault as at one time he was likely to quit and they brought in Ashley Giles to relieve his burden, so that's the ECB to blame. If he was a rubbish coach that once again is the responsibility of the ECB for retaining him. His current role was created for him by the ECB again he's not to blame. I sense a certain paranoia about this Flower business that suggests he and he alone is to blame for all of England's ills both past and present.

[Arthur Crabtree]

England win with a bit to spare. Competitive game. Not much work for the spinners, but two wickets for Leach.

[sussexpob]

Hope...I cant make it a quick paragraph, but I will explain as briefly as possible....

Flower's success bought him a reputation as a talent spotting genius. The reality was, he didn't really cap a single new player that was successful himself, he inherited a lot of Moores' picks that went onto establish themselves, and mixed them largely with the remains of Fletcher's group. In a long length of time, Trott was the only new cap that Flower had success with in tests, yet Moores had picked him with a FC average in the mid 30s and capped him already, and had stated he would play in the series he was sacked. So even Trott is dubiously a Flower pick as he had been picked by the previous selection committee (in fact, Flower ended delaying Trott's debut several months).

Flower's success bought him the currency to set in stone his cricketing coaching ideology through the domestic system. His main idea, found in his and Downton's currently used "Pathway to your Success", which is the strategic policy of the ECB in player development from grassroots to international players, was essentially that talent could be created. Flower became concerned with a players capacity away from their results in domestic or international cricket, and put faith in key drivers that, as named in the aforemention policy, include such random things like academic success.

Those players that did not fit Flower's modelling were often jettisoned out of the system quickly. Shehzad took 4/60 and never played at test again. Tredwell did very well but was capped twice. Steve Finn was deemed mentally weak and was insulted by being asked to bowl to cardboard batsman in a net. Graham Onions averaged the best of all England's test bowlers when Flower dropped him, his county wickets that came in buckets meant nothing. Amjad Khan got one test. Bairstow was dropped as being unadequate for tests. Root was told he had no technique and didnt survive the latter part of Flower's last series. Kerrigan was judged in 7 overs. Chris Woakes was judged in one test. Compton was dropped one game after back to back centuries which saved England losing to NZ. Taylor got two tests and his personality was taken apart. Carberry scored 30 runs and was dropped for 4 years despite consistently smashing runs in CC.

Interestingly, one of the most capped survivors of Flower's regime was Morgan, who played 17 tests I believe. He was far less worthy in county cricket, but he passed Flower's character tests and that meant more opportunity. Flower thought he could make players like Morgan into winners, regardless of him not even being in the best 6 batsman at his county in 4 day cricket.No other batsman who's caps start and end with Flower, played more tests.

This profiling also filtered to the established players. It seems Flower had a divided dressing room and sided with those players who adapted to the environment he created. He had little time for KPs or Trotts or CArberry's or Taylors. IF they didnt fit into his vision, it seems they were left as people to be marginal. Plenty of players, in fact probably the majority of them, have supported KP. And we know the problems in Australia were brought to the surface with KP calling out Flower on his coaching ideas.

We move to now, and the influence is still there. Despite being unable to reproduce his success because his selection policies were so poor, Flower is now head of scouing for the ECB. His influence is visibly increasing, yet his talent spotting hit rate has hardly improved. Ballance was supported by him, big failure. Vince came from the Lions with his stamp, failed. Yet the younger guys emerging outside of the Lions (Hameed and Jennings) have hit the ground running.

Essentially, Flower has no talent for his job. His selecting abilities have been proven in the long term to be disasterous. His tactical approach to ODI cricket was draconian, and his dismissal has lead to a revolution in England's performance. And his coach methods were widely accepted to have pushed senior players to mental breakdown levels of stress, such was the claustrophobic nature of his all encompassing system.

And he is a hypocrite. Jonathan Trott has said he was suffering from exhaustion and stress, but was told he couldnt take a rest when other players (Anderson) had taken mulitple games over different series off to rest, and was pressured by Flower to go for the Indian ODI series a few years ago before the Ashes, which he attributes to being a major factor in his stress problems..... yet Flower couldnt hack the multi format job, and retired from ODI management. How about that.

He is a toxic character that has no use in the long term benefit of English cricket.... yet he has clung on like some dictator to a job role that requires the weakest side of his ability, and is using this to slowly takeover the current setup with his ideas.

[sussexpob]

Of course there are two sides to every story, and Flower obviously put in place a system that worked well for a temporary amount of time. But these style of coaching methods might work in sports where training lasts 2 hours 4 times a week, and a match is a few hours at the weekend. For sports where their craftsman are holed up in a hotel for 6 months a year, away from their family, and where duty never ends for long and drawn out times, I believe that these types of methods only had a sell by date. They could not be consistently replicated year in year. The Ashes 2013-14 team must have been a dark place to be. Trott's upcoming book is one I will be buying, I am really interested to see his opinion on what triggered his problems.

[hopeforthebest]

Thanks sussex I shall print that all out and give it the attention it deserves as I find reading from a computer a poor substitute for a paper copy.

[Arthur Crabtree]

I wondered if Hope was being ironic given how much has been said on this board on Flower over the past four years.

[hopeforthebest]

I wondered if Hope was being ironic given how much has been said on this board on Flower over the past four years.

True but no one has clearly stated the charges against Flower backed by facts. Ne's not a personality that endears him to you but I can't understand what he's responsible for that attracts so much bile. Hopefully the piece from sussex will clarify everything.

[sussexpob]

I wondered if Hope was being ironic given how much has been said on this board on Flower over the past four years.

True but no one has clearly stated the charges against Flower backed by facts. Ne's not a personality that endears him to you but I can't understand what he's responsible for that attracts so much bile. Hopefully the piece from sussex will clarify everything.

I didnt realise I was auditioning for such a role. I feel under pressure now