Andy Flower awarded coach of the year – Cricket News Update
England’s coach Andy Flower has been honoured with the UK Coach of the year award for his exceptional contribution to the national team over the past year.
Flower was also named as the UK High Performance Coach of the year at an awards ceremony held in England on Wednesday, November 30, 2011.
The Zimbabwean has been coach of the Poms since 2009 and has made a significant impact until now.
Praising the role of England’s coach, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chairman David Collier said, “Andy has been an outstanding coach to the England cricket team and I am delighted that his dedication, knowledge and all-round leadership skills
have been recognised within the wider sporting world.”
He further went onto say, “The last twelve months have been momentous ones for England and this is in no small part due to Andy's personal drive and determination to bring the best out of his players and ensure that our preparation and performance are second
to none.”
The British team was not consistent in any format of the game before the appointment of Flower. He brought a lot of discipline in the side, which started performing consistently over the past couple of years.
Flower’s first achievement as head coach of the Poms was winning the ICC Twenty20 World Cup in 2010.
The Mega Event was held in West Indies and defending champions Pakistan were tipped as favourites alongside South Africa and India.
However, the English team performed brilliantly throughout the tournament and went onto defeat Australia in the Final convincingly.
At the end of the same year, England toured Australia for the Ashes series with hopes of retaining them.
The team had not won a series in Australia for the past 23 years, but that changed when Andrew Strauss and his men overcame the hosts convincingly by 3-1.
This was not enough for the spirited English side, as they crushed India to claim the number spot in the ICC Test team rankings. They are also at the top of the points table in the shortest version of the game.
However, Flower will now be hoping to change the team’s fortunes in One Day International (ODI) cricket, as they lack consistency in this format.