Flower a man of 'superb integrity'

David Collier, the former ECB chief executive who was in office at the height of various Kevin Pietersen controversies, has defended Andy Flower as a man of "superb integrity" and said that he never received any claims of bullying within the England set-up.

Flower, the former England coach, came in for some of the most personal attacks in Pietersen's autobiography. There were claims that Flower ran a joyless team in which players were afraid to speak their mind and with bowlers who created a culture of bullying.

As has been the general response from the ECB, Flower - now a senior figure at the national performance centre in Loughborough - has kept his counsel while the accusations have been thrown into the public domain but Collier, who officially retired at the end of September, said the period of success England enjoyed under Flower - three Ashes wins and a World T20 title - vindicated the methods.

"No accusation of bullying was ever made to me,'' Collier told BBC Radio Five Live's Sportsweek programme. "In any professional sport certain managers and leaders do have intensity from time to time. People that we respect as some of the greatest football managers have been known to be fairly robust in dressing rooms. Andy is an intensely passionate man, he has the most superb integrity.

"There is no way we could have had the success over his long and successful period if there hadn't been huge respect within that dressing room. In any professional sport players will get frustrated with each other - that's a fact of life. I didn't see that as in any way affecting the team atmosphere."

Collier echoed the comments of Alastair Cook, who said that the fallout from Pietersen's book was tarnishing a strong period for English cricket, when he spoke on Saturday in what was understood to be his own desire to react to the controversies

"That team was very, very close as a team and one of the frustrations at the moment for some of the senior players is they have created so much for English cricket over the past decade that they want that to be remembered," Collier said. "One of the reasons why is that they were all perfectionists, and if you want perfection you have to be hard on yourself."

However, there continues to be some support for Pietersen's view of Flower's approach from former players. Fast bowler Steve Harmsion, whose England career finished in 2009 at the end of Flower's first summer in charge when the Ashes were regained, said the side was run like a "dictatorship" but also that he respected both Flower and Pietersen.

"KP and I played on the same team for many years. I always got on with him and I'd like to think he liked me. He is a great lad, no matter what some say," Harmison wrote in his column for the Chronicle. "I enjoyed playing under Andy and he was honest with me when my time with England was coming to an end. Both are strong personalities and neither are in the habit of backing down. It was always a brittle relationship.

"However, there is some truth in the accusation, made in the book, that Andy ran it like a dictatorship. Last year, Stuart Broad openly admitted in an interview that every time Andy's number came up on his phone, he would s*** himself. His immediate thought was what had he done wrong, why was he in trouble. When he came to the conclusion that he was OK, then he'd pick up.

"And this is England's T20 captain and a star bowler. Stuart was scared of the coach. That's not good. How did the younger guys feel?"