No. 4: Andy Flower (part one)

In 2001, Andy was ranked #1 batsman in the world. Before the decade was out, he was coach of the top ranked Test team. In part one, we discuss challenging racism, exile, swallows and eye exercises.

My link to Andy Flower is one of the more tenuous in this selection. I never played with or against Andy - probably a good thing for me. Throughout my career I fancied myself against almost every left-handed batsman I played, but Andy’s mastery of the sweep shot - both orthodox and reverse - would have driven me to distraction.

I played for Barnt Green in 1992 - a club in a bucolic English village, complete with white picket fence, polite applause and a sagging 400 year-old inn across the road. I stayed with the Hampson family - as had an overseas player from Zimbabwe three years earlier. I became attached to the Hampsons and consider them ‘my English family’ but Andy would go one step further and join the Hampson family when he married Rebecca.

Our conversation veered from Stoic philosophy to Buddhism and the All Blacks, from Kristallnacht to Mugabe and swallows to jiu jitsu. Andy is clearly a man of high principles and expectations, but there was also a restlessness, the sense of a struggle to live up to self-imposed demands.

Andy has been Zimbabwe’s finest cricketer but his influence extended far beyond the cricket field. In the 2003 World Cup, Andy and Henry Olonga wore black armbands to “mourn the death of democracy in Zimbabwe.” Because of this stand, they were both forced to live in exile, to their beloved country to Robert Mugabe.

The black armband was a protest against human rights abuses. The confiscation of the farms, taking land off the white farmers, was actually a concept I could understand: ‘We are reclaiming our land.’ But the stupidity of it, the economic impact of the confiscations … and then when some white farmers were beaten and killed, others chased off their farms. The old white enemy was an obvious target, but actually, the people who were suffering the worst abuses were the predominantly peace-loving, gentle, average black Zimbabweans. The opposition areas were starved of food aid, women were raped, people were beaten, murdered.

The straw that broke the camel's back for me - after the idea of a boycott was planted in my head by a friend - came when I was reading the only independent newspaper in Zimbabwe. On an inside page, I read of a Member of Parliament for one of the high density areas [black, low-income suburbs], an opposition leader who had been arrested by the police on some spurious charge, thrown into jail and beaten. Their popular form of torture was whipping the soles of people’s feet with a cord, but it was reported in a way that made it sound normal. It wasn’t even front page news, and this was a Member of Parliament. I can't remember his name, but I do remember sitting in that coffee shop, reading the paper and thinking, ‘What the hell is going on in this country? Why is this not front page news? Why is no-one talking about this? Are we living in a society where we have become inured to abuses that have become so commonplace that we don't do or say anything about it?’

I said, ‘Right. I'm going to do something.’ That's when I contacted Henry [Olonga] and said, ‘We need to protest.’

Andy paused.

‘It was an emotional departure. Leaving your country, all your friends and the network that made you feel so secure for so long is a destabilising experience. I remember feeling very unsure of myself. I lost confidence through that move. We had to leave, but I have been back. About seven years ago, I took the kids, and we had an amazing holiday travelling around the country. It was sensational. I checked with people before we left and they said there wouldn’t be a problem, the threat of retribution had gone: “As long as you don't get involved in politics while you're there, you can get in and out of the country quietly.”

I took Andy back to the beginning by lamenting a missed opportunity: Andy had come very close to growing up in New Zealand.

Oh yeah, we did. We were living in South Africa at the time. I must have been eight-ish. We had sold the house, packed our bags - we were ready to go. We were going to travel by ship to Wellington, then news came from the New Zealand Embassy. They said we were no longer allowed to travel because we had five instead of four children. There were limits on the number of children you could bring into New Zealand. [In between applying for residency and leaving, Andy’s sister had been born]

I was born in Cape Town. I have no recollection of those early years, but then we moved to Johannesburg and I remember those days much more clearly. I went to what felt like an Afrikaner school called Boskop Primary School. I was really small as a kid, and I was bullied by the Afrikaners. We lived on an estate about 20 km out of Johannesburg. I describe it as an estate because it was like a farm, out in the bush, with various small houses on it. We had this amazing childhood, an outdoor lifestyle on the farm with a dam nearby. It afforded us the opportunity after school, on weekends, during holidays, to explore the bush - to go fishing, hunt snakes, shoot birds. I had a wonderful African upbringing.

But the schooling itself was quite tough. We played rugby in the winter and cricket during the summer. The rugby was barefoot and the Johannesburg winters were freezing and bone dry. In fact, right through my schooling, up until I was 18, one thing I remember vividly was playing rugby on rock hard grounds, because there was no rain. It was a tough physical challenge for a tiny English white boy.

One unpleasant aspect of my time in South Africa was my indoctrination - and I recognise it now as indoctrination - into racist beliefs, which took me a long time to challenge and then break free from. In those early years in South Africa and then in my initial years in Rhodesia (we moved there in 1978, before independence in 1980), the only conversations you had were with white kids and there was a pervading racist outlook and belief. You didn't hear anything other than that. Even though I would say that my parents were very liberal and non-racist, it was the interaction with my peers that formed my earliest opinions. I can see how easily people can be indoctrinated. You hear stories about what happened in Nazi Germany in the lead up to Kristallnacht, for instance, and I can understand why that happens, why people go with the flow and take the path of least resistance.

The first challenge to some of those embedded racist beliefs came when black kids started to arrive at the predominantly white schools. I think I was in my final year of junior school when the first black student joined our class. I never interacted with her, but I remember her sitting there, looking frightened. When I went to high school, there were more black students, and I started interacting with them and began to challenge why I had these racist beliefs. Then when I was 17, I went on a tour to England, my first tour outside Zimbabwe, with the Stragglers Cricket Club. We were billeted at people’s houses, and I recall staying with a family in Surrey who had a son called Andy the same age as me, and we got on well. I remember having discussions with him about race and dating a black girl, and I could not believe how this young white guy was okay with the concept. (I'm really embarrassed saying these things out loud.) He challenged me in a perfectly reasonable manner and that was when I started to feel that this was not making any sense at all.

One of the more powerful experiences for me came a couple of years later when I played at Heywood Cricket Club in Manchester as the overseas amateur. The pro for that team was John Abrahams. His family had actually moved to England from Cape Town and - I don't like the phrase, but it was of the time - their family was Cape Coloured. John had just retired from the captaincy at Lancashire after a long and successful career and became captain of Heywood. His brother, Pete, was a great guy and also played for us. Their extended family became an integral part of the Heywood club, and they became very dear friends. That friendship was the final proof for me that the beliefs that I held as a young man were not only completely wrong, they were diabolical. So that was my evolution from this racist little South African kid. Horrible and embarrassing.

I clearly remember our field of combat in Harare. It was very similar to your description [in ‘Letter to Ezra’] actually. The flower beds were the fielders and the wickets were drawn onto the brick wall behind us. The skills that you gain from playing against a bouncing tennis ball on a lawn are so transferable and important. As an adult, I took those games into my training, especially when we toured the subcontinent. I’d recruit the net bowlers and take them to the outfield to practise against spin, and it reminded me of the games I had played with Grant in the garden. The variable bounce, the importance of footwork, judgement and decision making, they're all there - down to the visualisation of the game between you and Maninder Singh or Anil Kumble. Those little games that I played with the net bowlers, or any young kids that would come out and try to emulate Murali or Maninder or Bishen Bedi, were instrumental in my growth as a player of spin.

I’ve coached Mohammad Rizwan and some of his practice was against bowlers from 16 yards with a taped-up tennis ball that swings all over the place. I think it's brilliant. I read about Bradman’s method with a stump and golf ball and tried that myself. I also practised a lot with those thin bats, all in an effort to train my eyes.

I remember Andy being unusually passionate about his eye exercises

I really believed in them (he laughs). Whether they did my eyes any good or not, I don’t know, but I believed that they did! My view of myself was that I had average physical talent and very average physical power and timing. I asked myself, ‘If I want to compete on the world stage, how can I make up for this lack? One area was supposed mental toughness and another area was using my eyes better than others, watching the ball better. Because if you cut batting down to the real basics, you're talking about how early can you predict where the ball is going to be - seeing the ball clearly, seeing the angle of the seam, seeing the rotations on the ball from spin, seeing the ball in a bowler's hand and how he is gripping it. I thought it was really important, so I tried to train my eyes to be better than other people’s. One exercise was flicking your eyes from near to far. Watching swallows was one of my things, following swallows in the sky without moving my head and I thought if I could do that, I'll be just a little bit sharper than the next guy, and I’ll make up for those differences in talent and physical ability.

As you know, confidence is so important - to your chances of succeeding when you're under pressure. One way to build genuine inner confidence is to be self-determinant in how you train, because then you will believe that you're getting the edge on the opposition. You're getting better than them because you're training better - whatever it is - your eyes, your coordination. Genuine self-confidence comes not from someone saying you're an excellent player but through building different types of drills that test and challenge you. Then you can see and feel yourself improving. You provide proof for yourself.

When I first started working with England as an assistant coach in 2007 - even during my first few days at Lord’s - it really struck me. In the morning before the match, the English batsmen wanted to face throwdowns but only cross-seam throwdowns, and their reasoning for it when I questioned them was, ‘Because I want to feel confident.’ It was alien to me. I thought that was a really poor way of trying to build confidence because anyone can hit cross-seam throwdowns somewhere near the middle of the bat, anyone with any reasonable level of skill. It doesn't mean that you have to train all the time and do drills that ensure you fail, but understanding how you build confidence helps people improve.

I asked Andy about his teenage years.

I was a bit of a rebel. I enjoyed classes and learning, loved the interaction with my friends but hated any form of homework or study at home - school was a social occasion. I got into that mid-teens drinking thing. I went to a government school in Harare, and we played against all the private schools and generally got hammered by them, but sport in Zimbabwe at that time was enthusiastic and well-organised. We played sports every evening from Tuesday to Friday and then matches on Saturday. When I was a little older, I played club cricket on a Sunday, too. So I was playing tennis, squash, hockey, rugby and cricket at school. It was a wonderful upbringing in that regard - you learn so much from being in teams.

At that age, I never considered I could turn cricket into a career. My first job out of school was as a trainee accountant for the Anglo American Corporation in Harare, and I did that for a year. I worked in an office, but again you asked if I was a bit rebellious ... sitting in an office and doing the books was not my thing. My rebellion, I suppose, expressed itself in my social life as a 19 year old. Even though I was getting quite good at cricket and being recognised by selection for the national side at that age, I would do silly things like turning up at practice, having had a long ‘lunch’ on a Friday afternoon, obviously not telling anyone, but not caring, thinking I was invincible, thinking I could do that and then train with the best players in the country. I think I've been quite a slow learner if I’m honest with myself - and needed to repeat mistakes much more often than a lot of people I respect. As an adult, I’ve watched people do things a lot better than I did as a younger man, misunderstanding what good leadership is, what good friendship is and good partnership. I can see clearly how I’ve repeated many mistakes in lots of areas of my life.

There were no professional cricketers in Zimbabwe at that time, but the Zimbabwe Cricket Union offered us coaching jobs. Alistair Campbell, Grant [brother], Dave Houghton and I were the first professional coaches in Zimbabwe. For the next few years we worked Tuesday to Friday, coaching in the high density, underprivileged areas, some of the private schools and some of the Zimbabwe age group teams. And then in ‘92 we were given international status, but even then we were only being paid as coaches. We didn't get paid as players for years.

One of my most interesting and rewarding coaching roles came some years later at Takashinga. I had always played for one club, Old Georgians Sports Club in Harare. We enjoyed lots of success, and I had a great group of friends there, including Grant. At one stage I was talking to my father who also did a lot of high density area coaching in Harare. Together, we decided to do two things - I would play at Takashinga - or Old Winstonians as it was called then - the first black club team in Zimbabwe. I didn't like the fact that there were black clubs and white clubs, so I thought it would be good to break that mould. I had coached a number of Old Winstonians as kids, when they were tiny guys of nine years old - Tatenda Taibu, Stuart Matsikenyeri and Hamilton Masakadza. At the time, they were the nucleus of a team of 18 year olds, trying to compete with established white and Asian clubs in Harare, so I thought I could offer them some experience and guidance. Secondly, they were a wandering club - they didn't have a venue - so we thought we could build a club for them. We went about raising the money and my father negotiated with the government for some land in one of the high density areas. It didn’t last long, but I was really proud of the work that my father and I did for Old Winstonians. I loved playing with that eager group of young black kids, and I've maintained good friendships with those guys.

I will share Part Two over the weekend. We discuss the All Blacks, Buddhist and Stoic philosophy. You can read it over a choccy egg.