Andy Flower believes England have come to the end of an era but is excited about the prospect of helping to build a new team from the wreckage of the one that might well feel a final twist of the knife in Sydney this week.

There will be changes for the fifth Test starting on Friday – minor rather than major surgery, most likely – but the coach and his drained captain, Alastair Cook, will not be among the casualties. Both want to continue beyond this Australian tour, and will put their plans and hopes to the ECB’s new managing director, Paul Downton, who arrived at the scene of the crime yesterday.

While agreeing that Australia are unlikely to release the tight grip they have taken on the series, Flower rejected the view that losing for a fifth time in succession would require his resignation. “Why?” was his direct and simple reply. Neither did he agree that England had forgotten how to win, pointing out: “These guys have won a lot of games of cricket. I think before Joe Root came on this tour he hadn’t lost a match so they all know how to win.

"I'm very confident in our support staff, they've done an excellent job over the years and I think it would be careless in a way to have a knee-jerk reaction to this Test series loss in that regard. It's important to remember over the last four-and-a-half years this is, I think, our third Test series loss [excluding the West Indies 2009 tour, when he was caretaker]. I still have confidence in my ability to lead this group in the right direction." Flower said the perception that he was in charge of a regime that is "too intense" was "180 degrees inaccurate. If anything, recently I think I have relaxed a little in certain ways and one of the areas you're asking about ways we can improve and change, if anything I could bring more intensity and a closer control on certain things. I know that might be the impression, but I'd say that's inaccurate."

Lack of confidence
He agreed that lack of confidence paralysed England's performance in Melbourne, where they led by 116 with 10 wickets in hand early on day three and still lost by eight wickets midway through day four. "We always want the players to play in a confident manner. But there's always a balance to be had between attack and defence. So, in Australia's first innings, their run-rate was pretty restricted because we bowled well and we set good fields that backed up the bowlers and the bowlers backed up the fields that were set. So they didn't play with such freedom in that first innings.

“Quite frankly, I thought through the whole game that the pitch was excellent to bat on. Both bowling sides did well in the first three innings, but it was a good pitch to bat on throughout the Test and the batting sides underperformed.

“In every Test we’ve had chances, we’ve had them 130 for five or similar-type scores on three occasions in the first innings and they’ve recovered well. Actually the length of their batting order – Haddin’s had an outstanding series – and their tail has contributed quite significantly.

"We've had opportunities in all four Test matches to get ahead of them and we haven't taken them so this Test was a little further forward in that we went into our second innings batting by the time we had that opportunity and we weren't good enough to take it. We weren't good enough to take it at the time."
Guardian Service