Strauss and Flower's greatest achievement
Sportsmen of all stripes tend to spout platitudes to the press
Tariq Engineer
25-Feb-2013
Sportsmen of all stripes tend to spout platitudes to the press. Worried about generating the faintest whiff of controversy, today’s top players content themselves with the blandest of statements, which are then prettily packaged by journalists and devoured by readers. It is a vicious cycle. Occasionally, however, some players manage to break the mould. In his Guardian blog, The Spin, Andy Bull claims the greatest achievement of the Andrew Strauss – Andy Flower combination has been to their willingness to tell it like it is.
The single best thing about the tenure of Strauss and Andy Flower is that they have banished bullshit. Listening to Peter Moores explain away his team's poor performances you felt like you were taking part in a motivational seminar for middle-managers at a municipal leisure centre. You could go in, sit down, switch on a tape-recorder and hum Bob Dylan's To Ramona to yourself ("I can see that your head/has been twisted and fed/by worthless foam from the mouth") safe in the knowledge that 30 minutes later you would be typing up a piece about the need for consistency, good areas and missing pieces of the jigsaw.
Tariq Engineer is a former senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo