Flower blooms in England as cricket withers at home

London: "I think all your life experiences affect how you coach," Andy Flower says on a quiet afternoon in Johannesburg. The former Zimbabwe Test cricketer, now coaching England, has already steered his new team to an Ashes victory last summer.

A promising start to the tour of South Africa has encouraged him further, especially after England's seven-wicket win last Sunday in the second match of the one-day series.

But, remaining more thoughtful than jubilant, Flower offers compelling evidence as to why England have benefited so much from having him as their head coach the past 11 months.

During his leadership of an embattled Zimbabwe team, when he was arguably the world's best batsman and the most courageous international captain, Flower confronted issues of morality that went far beyond plotting tactics against international cricketers.

Flower was tested in deeply troubled circumstances; and he has emerged now as a calm and resourceful coach.

"You are the sum of all the important decisions you ever made," he says, acknowledging the influential lessons of the past. "So some of the principles I held as a player are still being used by me in a coaching capacity. Some of them, however, make me cringe when I look back at what I fervently believed in 10 years ago. But, as cricketers, when you compare our lives to what's happening in the rest of the world we should thank our lucky stars every day. And, if we feel grateful, we will be more grounded. That must be healthy."

In purely sporting terms there is nothing healthier than Flower's resistance of English euphoria in the wake of an absorbing but uneven Ashes triumph. Unlike 2005, when the far more stoical figure of another Zimbabwean, Duncan Fletcher, could not stem England's hysteria after beating Australia, Flower and his captain, Andrew Strauss, have underplayed the celebrations.

Defining moment

This pragmatism is shaped by the defining moment of his life. In February 2003 Flower and Henry Olonga, his black, dreadlocked, opera-singing opening bowler, wore black armbands during the World Cup to protest against Robert Mugabe's dictatorship.

It resulted in their immediate and permanent exile from the country they loved most. Flower and his family were forced to settle in England and it is sobering to hear him relive the memory.

The next stage of Flower's cricketing journey could be the most rewarding, coming as it does against the country of his birth. "We left South Africa in 1978 [when Flower was 10]. I went to the very un-English school of Boskop primary in Randburg [in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg] and I didn't want to leave because we lived this idyllic outdoor life. Most white Rhodesians were making the opposite journey, leaving for South Africa. But my dad decided it was time for us to go back to Zimbabwe.

"It was a curious decision and, as my parents are in South Africa on holiday now, I asked my dad about it the other day. I said, ‘I couldn't believe you took us back before the civil war was even over.' He said he and my mother both had faith that things would turn out right in Zimbabwe.