In the Nagpur Test of 2000, Zimbabwe followed on despite making 382 in the first innings. Andy Flower made 232 not out in the second innings, despite India trying out 10 bowlers, and the match was drawn. That remains the highest score by a wicketkeeper in Test cricket, in which he averaged 51.54. He led Zimbabwe to its first ever Test victory, against Pakistan in 1995. As a coach, he guided England to the T20 World Cup triumph in 2010 and to the No. 1 ranking in Tests a year later. He also helped England score a Test series win in India in 2012; no visiting team has done it since. He remains much in demand as a coach in franchise cricket. Excerpts from an exclusive interview Flower gave The Hindu over the phone from Harare:
Ahead of the T20 World Cup final recently, you had predicted India would edge South Africa.
I thought the big difference would be Jasprit Bumrah and Kuldeep Yadav. Bumrah was outstanding again. He is just different gravy, isn’t he? In white-ball cricket, he is a class apart.
Michael Vaughan has said that Bumrah is the best seamer ever in white-ball cricket, putting him ahead of even Wasim Akram, someone you have faced quite a lot when you played for Zimbabwe.
I think it is a slightly unfair comparison because Wasim didn’t play T20 cricket. He was brilliant at what he did in red-ball and 50-over cricket. He was absolutely sensational.
He certainly was at the 1992 World Cup, in which you made your international debut.
Yeah, he was incredible at that World Cup. If he had played T20 cricket, he would have grown his skills even further and added greater variety. Even with the skills he had at that time, he would have been one of the outstanding fast bowlers in world cricket right now.
The T20 World Cup was Rahul Dravid’s last assignment as India’s coach.
He has been on the road a little while. He worked hard with the NCA for a number of years. That would have benefited Indian cricket hugely. And then he has done an excellent job with the national side, but it is no surprise, because in everything that he has taken on, he has always handled himself with grace, dignity and integrity.
Then you add his cricket knowledge, and his ability to connect and interact with his players and staff. I would imagine the Indian head coach position takes a lot out of you. I have played a similar role, and now I want to step into a different role where I can spend more time at home. I completely understand [why Dravid didn’t want to continue].
Talking of coaches, who have you been impressed by?
Oh, that’s quite a question! I think Duncan Fletcher did a good job with the teams that he coached. His knowledge and his attention to detail were excellent. We have spoken about Rahul and how I respect him. I think Peter Moores is a brilliant coach in a different way, with his energy, creativity and out of the box thinking. You know, it would be nice if he got an opportunity to express that in international cricket again.
I loved working with Graham Gooch. He has done all the jobs in English cricket, but he was an outstanding coach, in a number of ways. He worked as a batting coach with me and helped me tremendously.
I think Andrew McDonald is an outstanding coach. He is a little lower profile than some of the big names, like a Ricky Ponting. He might be a bit underrated for the outside world, but anyone that has ever had cricket conversations with him or worked with him, they would be rating him very highly. I think Australia is in good hands.
Two shades of great: Flower says he watched a lot of Sachin Tendulkar from behind the stumps and ‘respected him as a player and a bloke’. | Photo credit: Getty Images
As a coach, you took England to the T20 World Cup victory in 2010. Then you made England the No. 1 Test nation, all the way from near the bottom.
That World Cup in the Caribbean was sensational. That is one of the best tours I have ever been on. We had a lot of fun partly because there was low expectation from us. We just changed the way we were doing things. We picked a very attacking team with a lot of variety in it.
We picked two brand new openers [Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb], with the express permission to attack with gay abandon. Which they did. They were backed up by Kevin Pietersen, who played like that anyway. And Paul Collingwood was a brand new captain. He brought in a lot of creativity and ideas from his IPL experience, which was really good for me. We brought in some innovations in our attack, with David Saker, who was a new bowling coach for us.
Helping England become the World No. 1 in Tests, for the first time ever, was also an amazing experience. That was an interesting journey, you know, setting the target and mapping our way towards that. It was a great challenge. I really enjoyed beating Australia in the Ashes three times. That is a very tough task out there. As was winning in India in 2012. I think it was a significant achievement. We had to try and get this bunch of England batsmen to deal with the Indian spinners in Indian conditions.
Trailblazer: Flower holds the record for the highest score by a wicketkeeper in Test cricket: 232 not out. | Photo credit: Getty Images
The England batters must have got some help from their head coach who had done rather well against the Indian spinners…
Yes, that gave me confidence about my own knowledge of those conditions and how to play in them. But ultimately batting is quite a personal thing. How you stay in long enough to score runs, how you defend confidently, and then how you can apply the pressure back onto the spinners, and how you deal with reverse swing. I had had success in India, it probably gave me more confidence as a coach to talk about that. But we had Graham Gooch as the batting coach. And we had Mushtaq Ahmed as our spin coach. So that was a significant advantage for us as well, having that knowledge in our dressing room.
The best batter and bowler you have come across?
I have to say Wasim Akram was the best bowler. He was amazing, with pace and guile, knowledge and variety. I loved watching Sachin Tendulkar play. And I watched him play a lot from behind the stumps. I respected him both as a player and as a bloke. I think he has handled himself amazingly well through all that stardom. I thought Steve Waugh was a competitor at a different level. More recently, Virat Kohli, with whom I enjoyed working at Royal Challengers Bengaluru, where I watched him up close. I have a lot of respect for him.
(This interview was facilitated by Sony Sports Network)
