Arthur Crabtree wrote:Fair enough. Just that there's another side to it, which was far more exposing. And it's not just that his tenures with England were unsuccessful, for a variety of reasons, but his reputation was damaged through 1) Crashing the team when in charge through internal divisions brought about by unpopular training methods that led to outright rebellion 2)Crashing the team through being wedded to tactics that wouldn't work and he seemed unable to change. Towards the end he appeared to only be having a negative influence, seemingly demonstrated by the immediate improvements when he left. It's easy to understand why he has a poor reputation.
I've heard it said that Flower got his micro-management method from Moores. Can't know if that's true. Though Flower gives a lot of credit to Moores for his coaching ideas.
I was reading point 1 thinking "well, this is Andy Flower without the rebellion", then got to the last line. It certainly makes sense with what we know about the players reaction to his style, but it does leave the question on how Flower was able to maintain that style without similar immediate problems? The problems came 4 to 5 years later, in an enraged flooding of BS, but at the start everything was pretty rosey.
Id hazard a guess that the difference was Moores had cross over players from Fletcher. As those big influential players dropped out (Vaughan, KP lost his captaincy and went back to the ranks, Flintoff, Tresco, Sijo, Harmison, Hoggard) and were replaced with the newer players in the team, Flower was able to continue the policy with less (at the time) influential players.
Knowing what I know of Moores at Sussex, Id suggest he was Flower-Lite. He did pay creedance to modern day scientific approaches to things like Diets, but he wasnt the unfetted and narrow minded flower like person who was all encompassing.