Andy Flower: Autobiographies should only be written post-retirement

Andy Flower believes that players writing about their fellow mates must be reserved to their post-retirement plans.

England coach Andy Flower, has expressed his disapproval over players writing autobiographies in the midst of their sporting career. Autobiographies, especially in sports, have brought with them shocking revelations and sometimes unobtrusive opinions by players about their counterparts. Graeme Swann’s was no different as the excerpts of his new book The Breaks are Off, reeks of a controversy that is to erupt pretty soon. The excerpts from Swann’s new book read that Kevin Pietersen was never a captaincy material and doesn’t command the same respect as that of Andrew Strauss, under whom England ascent to the top happened.

However, Flower was happy about the way Pietersen handled the issue and also insisted that they will remain friends.

When asked if their views about their fellow players must be reserved to their post-retirement plans, Flower said, “That’s my personal opinion, yes.”

“I personally don’t think that it’s a good idea for current players to be talking about their fellow players. The written word does come across very, very differently – when you can’t judge a person’s tone. It’s all been handled in-house, without many problems. Pietersen and Swann get on well, and I think Pietersen has handled it very maturely,” Flower added further vindicating his point.

Pietersen was made England’s captain in Aug 2008 and his tenure as captain hasn’t been perceptibly great for England. After a successful home series against South Africa, they had a wretched tour of India that winter losing all the five ODIs and also losing the test series. He then stepped down in January 2009 at the wake of a public spat with the then coach Peter Moores, who was sacked.

Personally he has had an F against his name as an ODI batsman since then though his form in the other two formats has been very good.

“He is actually in very good form. His form in other formats during the last English summer was outstanding. He should be able to get runs out here, and I expect him to,” Flower said when asked about the same.

Meanwhile, he gave India full marks to Indian fielding when asked about the whipping his side had just taken. England lost to India by a 124-run margin on Friday.

“They out-fielded us – something that doesn’t often happen to us – and we didn’t deserve to win the game. But one down in a five-match series, we’re going to look to do something about that in Delhi.”

More than the loss, this game shone light on their vulnerability against good spin bowling and most of their batsmen almost looked clueless while handling the spinners especially Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja.

“Our problem was that we weren’t able to manipulate the spinners as well as they did in the middle overs – a catalyst for a number of wickets in that period. There were various aspects of the game that were good – Cook played nicely, again went at a run-a-ball. But in the main, we under-performed,” Flower said.

He also expected his side, which he believed had the mental toughness to bounce back, to come back strong in Delhi.

The second of the five match series will be played on Monday (October 17th) at Delhi and it will be a day-night game.