ECB need to nurture Flower

England's team director Andy Flower is unlikely to be tempted by any offer to replace Gary Kirsten as the India coach, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian but the ECB would do well to make sure their diamond is not purloined by a third party, be it India or anyone else.

Flower's relationship with the ECB is as a staff employee, with all the contingent protective rights that this brings. It is unlikely that this locks him into a fixed term. The board may well be looking to change that, tying him into a fixed-term deal with an option for extension.

Of most concern, however – and this is something I've written about before in this column – ought to be the prospect that the intensity of the scheduling could prove too debilitating for him to last the course unless he can be protected from himself. He was an angry man, with no small justification, when confronted with the itinerary between the end of the Ashes and the World Cup. Now he will insist on having some input into scheduling.