Grant Flower, the last man standing

[zimfan1]

Grant Flower, the last man standing

It is the end of an era. The last playing link with the Zimbabwe team that almost won their Inaugural Test, against India in 1992, against all expectations, and the team that did complete our first-ever Test victory, against Pakistan in 1995, has gone. Grant Flower has retired from all cricket.
We still have one current playing link with the team that completed our first-ever series victory, against Pakistan on their own turf in 1999, as Murray Goodwin is still playing, although unfortunately not in Zimbabwe. But, inevitably, time passes by, inevitably players retire, and from those thrilling early days of Zimbabwe as a full ICC member, almost twenty years ago now, Grant Flower has been the last to lay down his bat.

Forty used not to be considered too great an age for a cricketer. In years past the great Jack Hobbs scored exactly 100 first-class centuries after he turned 40, believe it or not. Even more recently Graham Gooch was the top English batsman of their season at the age of 43. Zimbabwe's own John Traicos played first-class cricket until he was 47. But the frenetic world of modern international cricket wears out players more quickly, and the oldest active Test player in the world today is Rahul Dravid of India, who only turns 38 in January. The phenomenon of Sachin Tendulkar, three months younger than Dravid, who has been playing international cricket for 22 years, is almost incredible in the modern game, which has cricketers playing all year round and racing about from one country to another with scarcely a moment to draw breath and relax, all under much more intense media exposure than was ever the case in the past.

Grant remains incredibly fit and disciplined, hallmarks of his career from beginning to end, and could no doubt have continued to succeed on the playing field for some years yet had he chosen to do so. “I have drawn the line,” he says. “I had to make the decision whether to coach properly or continue playing properly and prepare as well as I could. I think there’s enough talent coming through and I don’t want to hold anyone back. I’ve had a good run and I’ve enjoyed it, but there is a transition from player to coach, and I think it’s time to take it.”

Grant Flower during the second ODI International match between South Africa and Zimbabwe at Senwes Park

Grant Flower during the second ODI International match between South Africa and Zimbabwe at Senwes Park

Predictably, Grant feels that the greatest individual performance of his long career – he made his first-class debut in March 1990 – was his double-century against Pakistan in 1995, which included a partnership of 269 with his brother Andy. On the first morning at Harare Sports Club the Pakistan bowlers, spearheaded by Wasim Akram, were almost making the ball talk and reduced Zimbabwe’s top order to 42 for three. But Grant hung in there until he was joined by his brother Andy, who started to counter-attack as the ball lost its shine. Andy made 156, while Grant was still there when the declaration came at 544 for four, having scored 201 in almost eleven hours. This paved the way for Zimbabwe’s magnificent innings victory.

Also predictably, he feels he was at his peak as a player in and around September 1997, when he enjoyed a magnificent series against New Zealand at home, becoming the first Zimbabwean to score a century in each innings of a Test match; later in the season he carried his bat through the Zimbabwe innings for 156 against Pakistan at Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo. His grit and solidity at the top of the order had become a byword in international cricket; now he was developing a certain flamboyance as well, and especially in the New Zealand series he was displaying his strokes with a freedom that he had never shown before. “I definitely felt I was moving and hitting the ball as well as I could,” he says. “My confidence was sky-high.” Yet, strangely, soon after this he suffered a loss of form and was never quite the same player again. He was dropped down the order and finished his Test career in 2004 batting between numbers four and six.

What was the reason for this comparative failure when he appeared to have the cricket world at his feet? He still isn’t sure himself. “Maybe I lost a bit of my mental toughness,” he muses. “Maybe a bit too much one-day cricket developed a few faults in my technique for the longer format of the game. I still had the same hunger, but maybe there was a bit of burnout, too much cricket – a combination of things.” He also admits that perhaps he was too intense at times, too prone to let lapses in form affect his life and dominate his thinking. “A combination of training too hard, intensity and not relaxing in between games took its toll.”

The most difficult bowler he ever faced, he thinks, was the controversial Sri Lankan off-spinner Muttiah Muralitharan. “I couldn’t read him at all,” he confesses. Of the pace bowlers, along with many other Zimbabwean players of his era, he ranks Wasim Akram as the most troublesome of all, even above such outstanding bowlers as Allan Donald, Glenn McGrath, Waqar Younis, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh.

He was one of the disaffected players who left Zimbabwe cricket in 2004 and followed his brother Andy to the English county Essex. He enjoyed his six seasons with them, although they did not really see the best of him. In his younger days he would surely have relished the county scene and amassed a multitude of runs; now in his mid-thirties he did a useful job, especially in the one-day game, but during his last three years there he was rarely included in the championship team. “I spent the last two seasons just playing one-day stuff and did really well for them,” he says. This is quite different from the early days of his career in Zimbabwe, where he began as a dogged opening bat in the first-class team, but had to fight to be admitted to the one-day team as he was thought too slow. “It worked out for both of us and I really enjoyed my time there; I had six good years and can’t ask for any more,” he concludes philosophically.

He was now preparing for the years beyond retirement by going into coaching; back in Zimbabwe he had always enjoyed a reputation of being able to guide and galvanize younger players. Essex were keen to keep him on as their second-team coach, but all that changed when his old friend Alistair Campbell, newly appointed cricket manager, phoned him and asked if he would be willing to put something back into the game in Zimbabwe. Grant could not respond immediately, as he had to finish his contract with Essex and his Level Four coaching course, but he said he would love the opportunity as soon as he became available – and so returned to Zimbabwe at the end of the 2010 English county season. He took up a job as specialist batting coach.

His future, he feels, lies in coaching, and he would like to be a head coach – obviously at international level, although he doesn’t say so. “At the moment I’m just enjoying my new role and putting as much effort into it as possible,” he says. “There’s a lot of talent to work with on the batting side in Zimbabwe, and I’m enjoying it.”

He had had little or no time to make his presence felt, though, when Zimbabwe were off on tour to Bangladesh last November and December. In South Africa a couple of months earlier, Zimbabwe’s bowling had been massacred by the local batsmen; now it was the turn of their batting to fail against the Bangladeshi spin attack. What went wrong? “Firstly, I don’t think we had enough time together as a squad before the tour to prepare for those sort of conditions,” he says. “We had the domestic T20 tournament, and I don’t think the timing was ideal as it prevented the squad getting together. It probably needed a few more warm-up games there in their conditions. But that’s the way things go these days: things are pretty hectic. I think your home union should dictate that your players have a get-together just before they go away, like a one-week camp.

“But also I don’t think we adjusted to the pressure of playing their spinners very well. The guys did a lot of hard work there in between games in the nets, but it’s one thing having game plans and talking about them and saying all the right stuff, but you have to go and execute your skills under pressure. I think at times the guys were probably afraid of executing some of their shots and taking the calculated risks. But that’s what pressure does and it’s something our guys have to get more used to. But we’ve a lot of guys with a lot of experience who have played a lot of cricket, and so there are no excuses. So there may be some changes for the World Cup, and time will tell.”

Grant retired from playing cricket with a bang, leading Mash Eagles to win the 2nd edition Stanbic Bank 20 series in Harare

The poor form of our leading batsman Hamilton Masakadza this season is a major concern and a puzzle for Zimbabwe cricket. Grant as yet cannot pinpoint just where the problem lies. “He plays beautifully in the nets but he does struggle against the spin in the middle to a certain degree,” he says. “It might be just a thing against spin; maybe it’s a pressure thing. At the moment he looks very set and hungry to do well, preparation-wise, but time will tell whether he will get given another chance.”

As for the bowlers, “I think when our seamers bowled, they did okay. I thought in one of the one-dayers we probably could have put them under a bit more pressure when we won the toss and bowled first and the ball was doing a lot. I think their seamers showed us how to do it in the afternoon, by bowling really well in those conditions. I thought our spinners did a good job, especially Ray Price and Prosper Utseya, and their figures and rankings bear it out. I think they were backed up well by the other spinners. It was definitely the batting that let us down, but it was always going to be a hard task there; we played against very good spinners and we’re not the only international side who have gone out there and lost to Bangladesh, or struggled.” At least Zimbabwe did better than New Zealand, who recently lost four-nil!

“We’ve still got a long way to go, but hopefully the guys have seen how we played. There were a few words said at the end of the tour and hopefully the guys will have learned and will come back stronger for it.” He couldn’t comment on the strange Zimbabwe phenomenon of starting a series well, as they did in the West Indies, and then losing after that.

The Bangladeshi captain, Shakib Al Hasan, has earned himself much positive attention in the international press over the last year or so as a highly impressive player approaching true world class. Grant agrees, “Yes, he’s a very good player. He’s the number one ranked all-rounder in the world. He did really well for Worcestershire this past season and invariably he does one of the things well: if he doesn’t bat well, he bowls well, or vice-versa. He leads well also; he’s a good fielder and it looks like he’s got a good cricketing brain.”

Grant has only recently returned to Zimbabwe, so by his own admission he is not yet qualified to comment on many aspects on the cricket here today. But some issues do stand out in his mind. “Priorities – we need to get the basics right, so when they are under pressure they can fall back on those basics, which will serve them well. Whether you’re batsman, bowler or fielder, it means putting in the hard work, practising as hard as possible. I think the guys could work on their fitness more, which will help us in the field. I don’t believed the guys are fit enough, but they’re working towards that now. And learning to play under pressure, like we’ve already discussed, and finding ways of dealing with that pressure. But a lot of that comes from within each player, and it’s something the guys have to learn to deal with.

“I think our domestic cricket is a lot better than it has been over the last few years. There’s a lot of money that has been ploughed into it, there are a lot of good coaches over here, there are good county players who are coming out and helping the process. But I think some of the facilities could be improved, with some more money spent on those – the grounds, some of the net facilities. And there is a bad situation with cricket balls – a lot of the franchises struggle big-time with cricket balls and good cricket equipment. The actual netting in the net facilities at some of the grounds is disgraceful by international standards. These have been talked about, but one of these days someone’s going to get seriously injured, if not killed. For me, those should be the highest priorities off the field.”

It is a great boost for Zimbabwe cricket to know that, for the foreseeable future at least, Grant Flower is part of Zimbabwe cricket again. He has a tremendous amount to offer and is clearly giving as much to his coaching job as he was to his own game during the years when he was an institution in the national team. Today’s national players would do well to emulate his dedication and fitness, and the more they learn from him and apply what he has to offer, the greater the success they will achieve in the game.

http://www.zimcricket.org/index.php?opt ... Itemid=100

[sloandog]

I have a lot of respect for Grant Flower.
It sounds to me like he's really drilled some mental toughness into them, and the fact that he reckons the national side isn't physically fit is very interesting. Guys like Taylor could do with a few less night outs...

[Flower power]

Grant we hope the enthusiasim in you rubs off the boys

[Dr_Situ(ZimFanatic)]

My salute Gobby. It's just a beginning though and Zim needs much more from you.