With its origins dating all the way back to the 16th century, cricket has evolved greatly over the years.
From changes in its laws to adopting entirely new formats, the game has always been in a constant state of flux. While cricket’s lawmakers and custodians have played their part in evolving the sport with time, there have also been several players along the way who have created their own impact.
These players have helped change the manner in which the game is approached and their legacy is permanently etched in stone. Whether it be introducing a completely new shot with the bat or bringing a fundamental shift in the game, these players are cricket’s greatest innovators.
There is the great Sir Viv Richards who stood out among his contemporaries in the 1980s with his swagger and brilliance in playing ‘across the line’. Then there is Pakistan spin ace Saqlain Mushtaq who gave off-spinners a new dimension with his mastery of the ‘doosra‘. Who can forget the outrageous genius of Kevin Pietersen and his ‘Switch Hit’. Or the manner in which Sanath Jayasuriya completely revolutionised ODI cricket with his 1996 World Cup exploits.
Among these luminaries of cricket, there is one from Zimbabwe who stands tall in the form of Andy Flower.
The rebellious genius
Such has been Andy Flower’s impact as a coach that his exploits as a player are often forgotten. The South Africa-born wicketkeeper batsman is arguably the greatest cricketer to don the Zimbabwe jersey in a 10-year international career which ended abruptly in 2002.
The elder of the Flower siblings to represent Zimbabwe, Andy blossomed into one of the finest players of spin the world of cricket has ever seen.
Zimbabwe have fallen way down the pecking order since Flower’s retirement and now carry the tag of true minnows despite holding Test status. They are a far cry from the Zimbabwe side of the 1990s which included Andy and his brother Grant Flower, Heath Streak and Henry Olonga among several others. Even during that era, they were very much the whipping boys of international cricket, though they did pull off upsets every now and then.
When they did challenge the big boys, it was usually Andy Flower who led from the forefront. The left-hander fluctuated between excellent and average in the first half of his international career and it was the turn of 1998 when he really came into his own. In the latter part of his career, Andy Flower was a monster with the bat who could defy almost every bowling attack in the world on his own.
By the time Andy Flower hung up his playing boots, he was averaging more than 51 in Test cricket with as many as 12 tons to his name. He was a decent ODI player for Zimbabwe too, but it was with the red-ball where his most sparkling accomplishments came. Many a time, he was single-handedly leading Zimbabwe’s charge with the bat and several of his greatest innings incidentally came in losing causes.
Chief among those defiant displays were the 142 and 199 not out he registered in a 2001 Test against South Africa in Harare. Despite Flower’s sensational individual display, Zimbabwe still ended up with a nine-wicket loss. The 341 aggregate runs he scored in Harare are the second most by any batsman from the losing side of a Test match. Only Brian Lara has registered more runs in a Test defeat, with the Windies legend racking up 351 runs in Colombo just two months after Andy Flower’s grand effort in Harare.
It is a pity that Zimbabwe played fewer Tests compared to the top sides with Flower earning just 63 caps in his decade-long international stint. Just like he was with the bat, Andy Flower was defiant in his retirement as well which came in acrimonious circumstances.
Flower, along with Olonga, sported black armbands in the 2003 World Cup co-held on Zimbabwe soil, in protest against the ‘death of democracy’ in the country. Going up publicly against Robert Mugabe cost both the players their Zimbabwe careers, with Andy Flower subsequently choosing to shift his base to England before transitioning into one of the best coaches on the circuit.
The Reverse Sweep Master
The reverse sweep had been in existence long before Flower entered the international arena. While some historians point to Pakistan legend Hanif Mohammad as the inventor of the unorthodox stroke, it was his brother Mushtaq Mohammad who really popularised it.
It is certainly not an easy shot to master and requires plenty of control to pull it off. The opposite of a conventional sweep, the reverse-sweep requires plenty of wrist power for the batsman to execute it. Its genius lies in the fact that it allows the batsman to circumvent the field settings and exploit the gaps towards third-man and backward point.
Few batsmen have made this shot their own like Andy Flower, who could probably execute the shot in his sleep. It was the reverse sweep which was key to the Zimbabwean’s transformation into a spin-killer and he used it to great effect to unsettle the best in the world.
His mastery of the shot was most evident in Zimbabwe’s tour of India in 2000. In the two-Test series, Flower was dismissed just twice as he tormented India’s slower bowlers in their own backyard. Some 540 runs came from Andy Flower’s bat in his four innings including an unbeaten 232 in Nagpur and an unbeaten 183 in New Delhi. Once again, the southpaw’s individual brilliance wasn’t enough to avert a defeat for the visitors who went down by 1-0 in the series.
To treat India’s spinners with such disdain on their home turf was the height of Andy Flower’s command against slower blowers and it was his reverse sweep which did the bulk of damage. The shot ensured that spinners could never settle down against him while it was also a nightmare for the opposition captains to deal with. If the captain set a off-side heavy field to tackle the reverse sweep, then Andy Flower would switch back to the conventional sweep to inflict further damage.
Following Andy Flower’s stupendous success with the stroke, the reverse-sweep has now become a fairly common sight on the field. Almost every batsman now uses this shot, even more so in limited-overs cricket, to take advantage of field settings. Along with the conventional sweep, it has become a really effective counter against spin bowling and it was Andy Flower who really showed the way with his superb execution.
