14

Dogberry’s Comparisons

AH, WE’RE NOT quite done yet. There is still the awkward bit to come. The comparison, and the comparisons. As Robert Croft, my former Glamorgan colleague, said to me during the writing of this book, ‘I can’t wait to find out who you think is better!’

Fletcher or Flower? It’s like choosing between a kindly professorial uncle and an old ‘what-a-great-time-we-used-to-have’ university mate. Duncan Fletcher is not my uncle, and Andy Flower did not go to Swansea or Cambridge with me, but you get the gist.

If you think Flower’s England’s comprehensive thrashing of Fletcher’s India in the summer of 2011 (India did not win an international match in the entire tour) draws a firm conclusion then you clearly have not been reading carefully enough. As I mentioned earlier, Fletcher had had no time with his squad then, while they were ravaged by injury and fatigue. His 5–0 riposte in the one-day series in India is evidence enough of the worth of his work.

There is also another important point to be considered in comparing the two: Fletcher has been to the end of his England tenure, Flower has not. Unless he shrewdly departs at the top, it will end in tears some time. It always does. And the 3–0 Test defeat by Pakistan early in 2012 was a chastening indicator of how swiftly things can change. ‘Uneasy sits the crown’ and all that.

Overall comparisons are odious anyway, or odorous, as Constable Dogberry said in the Bard’s Much Ado about Nothing. I’ve always liked that malapropism and used it in 2011 when explaining the difficulties of comparing the side of 2011 with that of 2005, not least because three players – Strauss, Pietersen and Bell – played in both sides. Bell was undoubtedly a better player in 2011, but it might just be that Strauss and Pietersen were better batsmen in 2005.

The team of 2011 was undeniably a better ‘team’ in terms of its unity of purpose. As Matthew Maynard mentioned earlier, Fletcher has always spoken of the ‘critical mass’ of his team. He has always reckoned that you require eight solid characters in your side, who can then coax along the other three who might slack or disrupt. ‘But as soon as that critical mass reaches seven-four or six-five you have problems,’ Fletcher has said. That is unfortunately what happened in Australia in 2006/07, with Andrew Flintoff as captain.

Fletcher would have enjoyed coaching the England team of 2011. They had a critical mass of eleven; a group of genuinely good blokes. Believe me, that is rare. I have always been of the opinion that rugby dressing rooms are better places than their cricketing equivalent, because the characters found in them are generally less selfish. But the England team of 2011 seem to have bucked that theory.

Pietersen’s name will obviously spring to mind in contra diction, but he trains exceptionally hard and that fits easily into the Flower and Strauss regime. One insider told me that James Anderson might once have been a problem in that critical mass respect, but apparently it is not just his bowling that has been transformed.

Sometimes as a team they might have appeared fractured on the field, because they could shout and bawl at each other when mistakes were made. I personally don’t like that, and feel it was by far the most unattractive aspect of the side that went to number one. But those inside the camp insist it was just the team’s methods of ensuring high standards. They say there is never any lingering animosity. And we have to believe them.

The other problem with comparing 2005 and 2011 is the standard of the opposition. In 2005 England were facing one of the greatest sides to draw breath, even if Glenn McGrath missed the two Tests England won after twisting his ankle on that stray ball at Edgbaston. Indeed before the start of that series Australia’s points ranking (133) was at its highest at any time since the Test rankings were introduced. In 2011 it was an inevitable shame that India’s quality was constantly questioned. They came into the series with a points ranking of 125, and finished it with 117. In direct contrast England began at 117 and finished at 125. Throughout this South Africa remained second with 118. It was close at the top, unlike, say, the end of 2004, when England were second to Australia: England had 109, Australia had 130.

In 2005, as I have touched upon, the reverse swing of Flintoff and Simon Jones was as good as anything the cricketing world had seen. The obvious differences are in the spin and wicket-keeping departments. Graeme Swann and Matt Prior would win personal duels with Ashley Giles and Geraint Jones without any argument. Anderson would have to play, as would Flintoff, who held hands with greatness for all of that series. Alastair Cook or Marcus Trescothick, though? Jonathan Trott or Michael Vaughan? Strauss or Vaughan as skipper? Steve Harmison or Stuart Broad? Tim Bresnan or Simon Jones? And so on.

In my column I went with the 2005 lot, for their individual brilliance as opposed to what I considered the more workmanlike performances of 2011. ‘It is 2005 for me, just, but, as Dogberry might have said, the 2011 side smell pretty good too,’ I wrote. And this even though I’d pick six from 2011 in my composite eleven: Cook, Trescothick, Vaughan (capt), Bell (2011 version), Pietersen (2005 version), Prior, Flintoff, Broad, Swann, Anderson, Jones.

Throughout the research for this book I asked many people about the similarities between Fletcher and Flower. One said ‘Zimbabwean!’ with a laugh, and then said that was it. They are very different, yes, but they are also surprisingly similar. Neither of them smiles much for a start. Fletcher’s inscrutable gaze is well known, although he blames hereditary low jowls. He is generally happy, as it happens. And so is Flower, but the England team mock him for his miserable mien. ‘Grumpy Flower’ Pietersen called him jokingly after the team had reached number one and Pietersen was thanking Flower for keeping the team so grounded. And when at the post-match press conference in Sydney after the Ashes win in 2010/11 Strauss was asked why Flower was not on the field with the team, he said that it was because Flower was not very good at smiling. When told of that remark, Flower replied, with a smile, ‘That’s Strauss just being his cynical self.’

Scyld Berry’s typically thoughtful assessment of the differences between the pair was that Fletcher is rural and Flower is urban. I have touched upon that. Fletcher grew up on a farm where words were not essential; Flower grew up in the cities of Johannesburg and Salisbury/Harare. It shows. He communicates more easily. He is more tolerant with the media, although one Sky Sports employee did tell me that getting an interview from Flower was like ‘getting blood from a stone’.

‘There is always a danger that by putting yourself in the paper you are aggrandizing yourself at the expense of the players,’ Flower has said. ‘They have to go out into the middle to play the matches; they go into the lion’s den. As a coach, you should never lose sight of that.’

The majority of my interviewees reckoned Flower to be the better man manager. I know that will irk Fletcher. He prides himself on his man management, and it was immediately proved by his treatment and the subsequently positive responses of the likes of Graham Thorpe and Phil Tufnell with England. Mike Atherton said as much in his autobiography when considering that early period when he was still an England player. Talking of Ray Illingworth’s time as England manager, he wrote, ‘He was as poor as Duncan Fletcher, later, was excellent.’ And Fletcher’s problem is that people easily remember the troubled latter stages of his tenure when he was mostly putting out fires started by the likes of Flintoff rather than the earlier more successful times.

But all those interviewees also said that Fletcher was the sharper coach. As Giles says, ‘If I weighed the two up, I would say Fletch has more of the technical and less of the man management, and Andy is the opposite. But the mixes are still good, on both sides. They are just different forms of coach.’

Giles, a player under Fletcher and a selector under Flower, was interesting on their similarities. ‘They have both got really good, simple disciplines,’ he said. ‘Respect and pride seem to be in-built into some of these Africans. There is not a lot of mollycoddling, but that doesn’t mean they are not good man managers. It takes time to get to know them, and you have to break them down.’

Both keep their distance from the team. One current England player said to me, ‘I wish we knew Flower a bit better,’ but another told me that, as he was a young tyro, Fletcher had barely spoken a word to him.

But both have a desperate desire to win. There is a good story about Flower when he was coaching at Oxford University in 1997 (when, incidentally, he beat Fletcher as a coach for the first time when his Oxford team defeated Fletcher’s Glamorgan – minus a few senior players, it does have to be said, including me! – in a run-chase after a rather generous declaration). His team had just been beaten early by Nottinghamshire and it was decided to play a game of football on the outfield between the teams. Oxford were hammered in that too, and their players headed for the showers and then, so they thought, their colleges. Flower had other ideas. He wanted to talk about the football. The players just didn’t get it. It was only a game of football. ‘It’s about winning,’ Flower told them. ‘You must never, never accept losing.’

I found this story interesting because when Fletcher came to Glamorgan that year, one of the things he introduced was games of football and touch rugby as extra sessions of fitness. We had never done that before. Indeed I remember an occasion at Derby when Hugh Morris was captain and I’d brought a rugby ball along to kick around with, because I was planning a comeback season with Lydney. A game of touch was suggested. ‘If you lot play touch, you’ll be in trouble!’ said Morris. But Fletcher encouraged it, before and after play. He encouraged the competitive side of it, splitting sides into youngsters and oldies, or East against West Wales. He’d always watch intently, scowling at slackers, enjoying the competition and never seeming to mind if tempers frayed.

Sadly you won’t see England’s cricketers playing football these days, as it was banned after Joe Denly was injured in a clumsy tackle by Owais Shah at the Oval in 2009. But Fletcher and Flower probably prefer rugby anyway, even if injuries prevented their playing the game for too long as youngsters.

Maynard, Fletcher’s former assistant, says of the two Zimbabweans, ‘I’d say there are huge similarities between them. Because Andy was more of a player in the spotlight his media stuff is far better, but, just like Fletch, he is very considered, very protective of his players and looks very well organized.’

It was the American philosopher and writer Henry David Thoreau who once said, ‘The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when someone asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.’ And that is one of Flower’s great strengths. ‘When you sit down with him you actively see him listening to you,’ says Morris. ‘And he is very considered in his response to you. He listens to people, he learns from them, he then plans meticulously and then leads that plan.’

Flower does listen, and he does seek advice in looking for what he calls ‘nuggets’ of information. He will talk to the likes of Ian Botham and Geoff Boycott in order to keep them onside. In both 2009 and 2010 he spoke to John Buchanan, the former Australia coach, about the Ashes series in those years and ways of planning for them. He regularly speaks to some journalists, giving them off-the-record briefings so that they understand what he is trying to do. And he has been cute in his relationship with the counties.

As Giles, as Warwickshire’s director of cricket, says, ‘He has managed it very well, probably better than Fletch. There is still a hell of a lot of cricket but Fletch might have got to the point where, quite rightly at the time, he said, “Sod the counties; we’ve got to look after these blokes for international cricket.” Andy has been very clever in making the counties and the county coaches feel part of the process of producing the England team. That’s how I feel anyway. When you get Bell and Trott back you feel he is doing you a favour in some ways. He is open to conversation about when you can have them back and it is more of a joined-up process. When I was playing, I might have popped back for a game but it was purely popping back for a game. They [Bell and Trott] are more Warwickshire players than I was.’

That might sound like heavy criticism of Fletcher, but it is not. Giles is an unashamed Fletcher fan. It was just, as I have said before, that Fletcher had the hardest part as regards the counties. Managing the beginning of central contracts was breaking over a hundred years of tradition, when the counties had always been in control of their players. It was always going to be messy.

Fletcher did communicate with the counties, always trying to go to every one after a winter tour, but even Maynard agrees that, with a better structure in place, it would have been good for him to have done more. He recalls speaking to Flower about this very issue when Flower was working at the National Academy in the winter of 2005/06 and Maynard had just returned from England’s tour of Pakistan. ‘We talked about one of the things Fletch needing to do was speak to the county coaches to make sure they knew about his philosophies and what sort of cricketers he wanted,’ he says. ‘But it never happened because of a lack of time.’

In 2010 Maynard was still cricket manager at Glamorgan before resigning after some shockingly underhand events at the club, whereby a new skipper, the South African Alviro Petersen, was signed in Dubai by three members of Glamorgan’s hierarchy without Maynard’s knowledge. Maynard was impressed that Flower made time to meet with various county representatives (it helps that he has Morris to sort out so many peripheral issues). Maynard went to dinner with Flower, Craig White (Yorkshire) and Richard Scott (Middlesex). ‘I thought it was brilliant,’ says Maynard. ‘As a coach you could then go back to your county and say, “Right, this is what he wants.” ’

In one-day cricket Flower likes his explosive batsmen. And by coincidence that means he likes Tom Maynard, Matthew’s son, now at Surrey after walking out from Glamorgan in disgust at the treatment of his father, and selected in 2011 for the winter Performance Programme squad. In 2010 Tom was asked to take part in a Twenty20 match situation the day before one of England’s T20 internationals against Pakistan in Cardiff. Batting second, Maynard played exceptionally well, before attempting one heave too many and getting out with victory in sight. His team-mate Jos Buttler (Somerset) was bowled next ball to leave his side in trouble. Flower was not slow to communicate his feelings afterwards, using the example of the former footballer Eric Cantona. ‘He [Cantona] knew he could play the magic ball,’ said Flower to Maynard junior, ‘but he chose to play the simple ones until he knew the time was right.’

Fletcher listens too, despite the common perception to the contrary, as Dean Conway confirms: ‘I would say something to him subtly the day before, like I thought that warm-ups were too long, and he would not say “Yeah, you’re right”, he’d just say “OK”. Then the next day that thing would have changed. I found him a good listener, but you had to be in that circle. Towards the end he got overly suspicious.’

Former team analyst Mark Garaway says that he did not become aware that Fletcher and Flower were so similar until Flower took over in the West Indies in 2009. ‘I wouldn’t have known before,’ he says, ‘but very, very quickly it was evident that we were dealing with a guy who was obviously a younger version of Fletch but had all the same beliefs. The difference between the two was that Andy was probably more prepared to challenge, irrespective of the person. So nobody got off lightly. He wasn’t about respecting people’s feelings. It was all about the team, and if somebody shed a tear at something he said he couldn’t give a stuff. That was a very strong message to send out. I’m not saying that Fletch wasn’t good at challenging, but during his time Flintoff, say, had got quite big.’

Yes, it is interesting that Flower has appeared more prepared to drop his big names. Pietersen, Broad, Collingwood, Bell and Anderson have all felt the cold steel of his selectorial axe. But in truth it is easier for him these days. England have far greater strength in depth. During Fletcher’s time there was rarely that depth. That is why the team of 2005 unravelled so quickly. There was simply not the personnel to step in once injuries struck.

Garaway highlights the difference in coaching methods between Fletcher and Flower. ‘It is a generational thing,’ he says, ‘but it is also because Andy’s first coaching experience came under Pete [Moores] and that became very much a specialist and more scientific approach than Fletch’s, which was a more integrated method. Pete had been a huge driver in getting the analysis department to grow and as a result we had a huge amount of people doing a lot of data mining behind myself. It was always going to go that way.’

And that is the way it has gone. Flower had been given the book Moneyball (Michael Lewis’s tale of the statistics-driven success of the baseball team the Oakland As under their manager Billy Beane) to read by Moores and was an instant convert. Flower is cricket’s Beane. It is a measure of the increased standing of statistics and statisticians that that can be seen as a compliment. In days gone by, he might have been called Mr Bean.

When interviewed for the job of team director in 2009, Flower stated that he wanted American sports science and particularly the analysis of statistics to be used more in cricket. It was a point reinforced when I interviewed him later that year. ‘I think we are only scratching the surface with cricket statistics,’ he said. ‘They will play an increasing role in how you formulate strategy or pick people.’ They have done that, courtesy of the department at the National Cricket Performance Centre at Loughborough that is solely concerned with statistics.

Not that Flower eschews technical work or talk. ‘Some players are scared of talking technique,’ he says, ‘because they believe it will slow them down in the middle. But if there’s a problem with technique – if, for example, you’re playing a forward defensive and the ball keeps sliding off the bat – then something’s wrong and it has to be addressed. If you’ve got a solid technique, your confidence will grow.’

But he will often use statistics to reinforce a point. ‘It can be a very pure, a very non-judgemental form of feedback,’ he says. ‘I’m not saying you’re a good guy or a bad guy, a great player or a bad player; these are the figures, let’s talk about them.’

England’s main analyst is, of course, Nathan Leamon. When England got to number one in the world, his name and his nickname ‘Numbers’ came to the fore. He had planned England’s ascent up the rankings, and a lot else besides. He had also played all the Test matches that got them to the top on his computer even before they had been played on grass. ‘We feed into the simulator information about pitches and the twenty-two players who might play, and it plays the game a number of times and tells us the likely outcomes,’ Leamon told the Sunday Times. ‘It helps us in strategy and selection. I’ve checked the programme against more than 300 Tests and it is accurate to within 4–5%.’

The simulations are based on those first used in the 1940s by the mathematicians John von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam and Nicholas Metropolis, who were working on nuclear bomb projects for the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. It was called the Monte Carlo method after Ulam’s uncle, who was a hardened gambler in the casinos of Monte Carlo. ‘Tell me what Monte says,’ Flower will often say to Leamon when faced with a decision upon which he cannot immediately decide.

One such obvious instance is the toss. Leamon reckons that from the five hundred Tests he has looked at, you are just as likely to win the game if you’ve lost the toss as when you have won it. It is a logic buttressed by Strauss, who thinks that, with Test pitches deteriorating less, the days of always batting first have gone. ‘If you think there’s going to be something there and you bowl,’ he says, ‘but there isn’t a huge amount there after all, you haven’t actually lost a lot, because not many wickets these days deteriorate massively.’ ‘When in doubt, bat’ might have actually become ‘when in doubt, bowl’.

Leamon makes extensive use of Hawk-Eye data in preparing pitch maps for opposition batsmen, breaking down the target areas for bowlers into twenty blocks, each 100cm by 15cm. ‘A lot of the old ways of looking at the techniques of opponents leads to guesswork – feet position, how they hold the bat,’ says Leamon. ‘Hawk-Eye enables you to come up with answers.’

It is an interesting point from Leamon. There has always been analysis in cricket. But in the old days it was conducted in the bar, and then stored in bowlers’ minds if they hadn’t drunk too much and could remember.

But having plans is one thing, implementing them is quite another. That is where England were so brilliant in the Ashes of 2010/11 and the India series in 2011: their bowlers were unremittingly accurate. Contrast that with 2002/03 and the infamous first Test at Brisbane, where Nasser Hussain inserted Australia. The home side made 492 but Fletcher says all of their batsmen bar Ricky Ponting fell to pre-conceived plans. ‘It took so long because we did not bowl enough balls in the right place,’ says Fletcher. ‘Plans to dismiss a batsman do not work unless you can bowl five or six balls an over in that area.’

It was a similar problem in 2006/07 when, embarrassingly, England’s bowling plans were leaked during the Melbourne Test. It would be easy to mock them in comparison to today’s, especially as some of the words were misspelt, but in essence they are little different. They had the essential weaknesses of each batsman, and they had the shrewd field-placings (for example, a ‘straight catcher on edge of pitch’ for Matthew Hayden) that were so lauded in 2005.

However, I reckon England need to be careful. They must not give too much away. Quite clearly Loughborough and the wonderful cricketing community working from there is a hive of invention and trail-blazing initiatives. They are giving the England team and English cricket an edge. But it will not remain so if other countries are able to copy and catch up. I’ve always felt a little guilty about the Ashes Regained book I did with Fletcher after 2005. Fletcher was very careful not to reveal too much about the Australia players he knew would be playing in the next Ashes, but before that 2006/07 series his opposite number Buchanan said, ‘I’ve made the book mandatory reading for our coaches. I think it provides a very interesting insight into Fletcher. He discusses his own philosophies and also gives his thoughts on the current players and the way they play the game in England.’ Oh dear.

In 2011 I did a small piece for my Final Whistle column on the increasing influence of mathematics in sport, and especially in cricket. I obviously mentioned Leamon and Loughborough in despatches, but I had also come across the crib sheet used by a county team before one of their Twenty20 matches that season. I found it fascinating, especially the statistical detail it went into. I did not mention the county by name but I did drop in a couple of random statistics and terms used in it. ‘Dot ball limit’ was one of them, and, apparently, that gave the game away. That was their term. The county in question were not happy, so I was told. And in a way I was happy about that. They were protecting their own little version of the Crown Jewels. Caveat inventor. Look what happened to Australia after we copied their Academy all those years ago.

Of more importance, though, for England to beware of is the future of Flower. As you may have noticed, I am no closer to judging him against Fletcher. It is impossible. In their different ways under different circumstances, they have both done superb jobs.

Under Fletcher, England played 270 matches of all types, winning 119 at a winning average of 44%. Under Peter Moores they played 79 and won 30 (38%). Under Flower, up until the end of the 2012 Test series against Pakistan, they have played 135 matches, winning 69. That is a winning percentage of 51.11%.

Under Flower, England have won twenty of the thirty-nine Tests played (a stunning 51.28%). In eleven series England have won eight, drawn one and only lost two. With India in 2011 in the bag they had won six series on the trot, but so did Fletcher’s team in 2004 and 2005, culminating with the Ashes at home that year. In twenty-seven Test series Fletcher’s team won fourteen, with six drawn, so just over half compared to Flower’s 72.7%. Fletcher won forty-two of his ninety-six Tests (43.8%). By comparison in the whole of the 1990s England only won twenty-six from 107 Tests (a miserable 24.3%). In the 1980s it was twenty Tests from 104 (an even worse 19.2%). In the 1970s it was thirty-three from ninety-five (34.7%). The numbers don’t lie. The improvements are huge.

The England cricket team is back, and in 2011 was better than ever (at least in the modern era). And Fletcher and Flower have put them back where they belong. So I just hope Flower is better treated than Fletcher was at the end of his tenure. Zimbabweans might well want him to return home, but I cannot see that happening, even though he does still own that house in Harare.

Of course he has hankerings for his homeland. ‘I miss certain things about Zimbabwe, yes,’ he has said, ‘but that’s sort of dwindling the longer I am out of it. The most obvious one would probably be some of my closest friends and interacting with them again. But there are also things like the smell of the rain, or the smell of the bush, and being able to go fishing or into the bush, or just go to someone’s farm. The freshness and innocence of that type of lifestyle, I do miss that. And I was really lucky as a kid, so lucky to grow up there.’

But I cannot see him continuing in the main England role for too long. Just read the words of this interview he gave in March 2011. ‘My kids are twelve, ten and eight,’ he said. ‘So it’s a very important stage in their development as young people and I’m not convinced I’m doing the right thing by the family by doing this job. I’m a bit greedy because I’m trying to get the best of both worlds by helping to raise a young family and also trying to make a difference with the England cricket team. I worry about the fact this time can’t be regained. I worry about the fact the kids might at some stage resent me for being away during these years.’

Give Flower no more than two years, I reckon. England might need to start looking for another Zimbabwean coach. They do seem rather useful. Two of them have taken England from the bottom to the top.

But England already have another Zimbabwean coach. When Flower left the Brisbane Test in 2010, it was the Zimbabwe-born Richard Halsall, not Graham Gooch or anyone else, who took over. It was the same when Flower missed the short trip to Ireland in 2011. As long ago as 2009 Flower told me that Halsall could easily be a county head coach.

Could Halsall, with greater prior experience of the requirements of international coaching than Moores, step up to the national job?

We may well discover one day. But Halsall, or anyone else who takes over for that matter, will know the magnitude of his task.

They will be big boots to fill. Very big boots indeed.