Andy Flower liked to put a price on his wicket and it might not be wrong to say that he put the highest price on it while playing India. Zi...
Andy Flower liked to put a price on his wicket and it might not be wrong to say that he put the highest price on it while playing India. Zimbabwe’s rise as a Test nation in the ‘90s owed as much to the talented bunch they had assembled as it did to Flower’s incredible batsmanship.
For a while, the numbers were simply astounding and they established him as the best wicketkeeper-batsman in the world. In the eyes of some, simply the best batsman too.
In a glorious run of nine Tests in the 2000s, he scored 1,066 runs at 88.83. Then, commentators would wonder aloud about his mental resilience and marvel at his concentration, which almost never seemed to break.
“When I started taking cricket seriously,” he explained, “I never actually had a high regard for whatever talent I had. Seeing the ball, hitting it, there were plenty of other cricketers who did that far better than I did. But I thought one area where I could be better than them was to be more determined, more hungry, and not give anything away.”
And all of it seemed to come together perfectly during the two-Test series in India in 2000. In those matches, he blunted India’s spin attack with...
