Sir Dave Brailsford, one of Britain's most successful sporting leaders, has sympathy for Andy Flower after the Kevin Pietersen saga laid bare the challenges of leadership of a team.
Pietersen's travails with the England team led by Flower have been well documented in recent days and Brailsford, the Team Sky principal and former British Cycling performance director, believes it has been forgotten how successful Flower was as England team director.
"I'm very sympathetic to Andy Flower," Brailsford said at the Leaders in Sport conference in London.
"I've never met Kevin Pietersen, but I do know Andy Flower. I rate Andy Flower.
"I can't draw a conclusion or comment because I don't know the full story or the full detail of the facts.
"(But) we shouldn't forget that he's had a fantastic run at managing the national team.
"People forget that we hadn't won the Ashes for such a long time and he took us on a journey down to Australia and he took the Ashes back.
"I'm not a cricket aficionado, but, to me, I think he changed the mentality, from a pretty poor run, all of a sudden we were winning the Ashes and we were expected to win the Ashes."
Brailsford has had his own selection challenges in recent years and struggled to accommodate Sir Bradley Wiggins, the 2012 Tour de France winner and Chris Froome in the same team, so is familiar with dilemmas similar to the Pietersen one.
Brailsford added: "The best sports people in the world aren't normal people. So you're bound to get difficult scenarios and conflict.
"When you've got flair players, or big characters, the guys who don't quite fit. It's a challenge for all of us to try to marry those into a team. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
"You've got to decide if you want a team and if being a team is the optimal way of winning. And if you've got somebody who is contrary to that process of having a team, you've got to think very carefully about what you're trying to do.
"If you get the right guys (in a team), they're motivated, passionate about it, we put the right group together, the team will look after itself.
"There's an element, if we're not careful, of the whole team ethic and values which doesn't penetrate right down to individual performance on a day to day, granular level."
Wiggins was not selected in Team Sky's squad for the Tour de France, which began in Yorkshire in July, with Brailsford opting to avoid conflict in the three-week race by backing Froome for glory.
Froome's challenge ultimately ended due to injury.
Brailsford added: "The decision I made was I felt the best chance of Team Sky winning this year lay in Chris Froome's hands. I built the team around that."
