"We can still come back in this series and the guys are positive about it" : Grant Flower

[giri26]

"We've got a few things to work on such as batting, bowling and fielding and hopefully we can get it right"

"There have been some soft dismissals but they have been created by the pressure created by some excellent bowling by the Kiwis"

"The guys have struggled with the bounce as they have been playing quite a bit in Pakistan and coming here was a bit of a shock to the system even though some of have played here before"

"We can still come back in this series and the guys are positive about it"

"They are good players and they don't become bad players overnight so there is no reason why we cannot get a good result on Saturday"

"Its a combination of mental and actual hardwork in the training"

"A lot of it is the mental side of things at this level so we keep on talking positive stuff with the guys and making sure that a lot of positive feedback is going back to the guys"

"DL method is the same for both sides; Obviously the rain didn't help the other day as the guys struggled with the ball the other day but its one of those things, swings-and-roundabouts - sometimes it works for you, sometimes it doesn't"

"Fakhar should be fit for the next game; he is a navy man so he should be tough enough to get through this"

"He landed on the ball in the field but when he batted, he batted bloody well so his thigh stiffened up overnight"

"So Pakistan batsmen need quick feet to handle the bounce; we also have brought over a slab to practice against exaggerated bounce"

"The pitch here is not the bouncy from what I have seen before bit I am sure given the success the seamers have had against us so far, they will try and make it as bouncy as possible"

"We haven't seen the best of this side yet"

"The batting has a lot more to offer so hopefully we will see that"

"We rate this NZ team very highly and in the field they are brilliant and they have all bases covered as they bat all the way down"

"We won the CT when we were down and out after the first game so no reason why we cant do it again"

 

[indipper]

Still living over the CT.
But yes you guys got potential to turn it around if team can put up serious display of cricket.
Missing Shehzad here. His cross batted shots can nullify bouncers here.

 

[Titan24]

Still living over the CT.
But yes you guys got potential to turn it around if team can put up serious display of cricket.
Missing Shehzad here. His cross batted shots can nullify bouncers here.

Good point about Shehzad.

 

[Savak]

Not too concerned with the result of this series, but we need to question ourselves whether having Azhar Ali opening the batting and Rumman Raees bowling is the right move.

 

[Slog]

How long has Grant Flower been around?

must be having the longest stint ever for a foreign coach for Pak

 

[Billa86]

What a load of rubbish statements from Grant. Firstly, he says 'Guys have struggled with the bounce', well if that was the case, why didn't Pakistan management send the team to New Zealand earlier to acclimatise to conditions and prepare few friendly matches against local teams? Secondly, ‘combination of hard work and training’, Pakistan team have always known to be mentally weak when put under pressure. For years we have been hearing this but not much has been done about this. Our batsmen are technically inept when playing on seaming and bouncy pitches. Thirdly, team management cannot use Fakar’s absence as excuse, when rest of the batsmen will take reasonability, are they in team due to their high rank links or nepotism. Players like Babar, Hafeez, Shoaib & Sarfraz need to should more responsibility and need to stop making useless excuses. I really expected hardline from Micky but he seems to have gone soft. Stop living over the CT win…. Wake up Team Pakistan…. I fear it will be clean sweep by New Zealand.

 

[Mamoon]

Utter nonsense by Grant. Mediocre cricketer and a mediocre coach, stealing a living without any appraisal.

He has no business in the team after the appointment of Arthur; needs to be offloaded.

 

[DRsohail]

Utter nonsense by Grant. Mediocre cricketer and a mediocre coach, stealing a living without any appraisal.

He has no business in the team after the appointment of Arthur; needs to be offloaded.

Slightly better word used than the commentry of sarfarz...we battted well down the oldel but oul main bastmen has to pelfolm and hopefully the guys will perfomr in next match<in 2010>

 

[DRsohail]

Sick of his typical press..should record a good press and play it every time when its press time.

 

[Chief Destroyer]

"We've got a few things to work on such as batting, bowling and fielding and hopefully we can get it right"

Exactly!

 

[CadPakFan]

"We've got a few things to work on such as batting, bowling and fielding and hopefully we can get it right"

A few things?

 

[Chief Destroyer]

Fielding has been good though for the most part. We just handicap ourselves by having Imam, Rumman and Hafeez in the field.

 

[The intelligent Supporter]

"We've got a few things to work on such as batting, bowling and fielding and hopefully we can get it right"

"There have been some soft dismissals but they have been created by the pressure created by some excellent bowling by the Kiwis"

"The guys have struggled with the bounce as they have been playing quite a bit in Pakistan and coming here was a bit of a shock to the system even though some of have played here before"

"We can still come back in this series and the guys are positive about it"

"They are good players and they don't become bad players overnight so there is no reason why we cannot get a good result on Saturday"

"Its a combination of mental and actual hardwork in the training"

"A lot of it is the mental side of things at this level so we keep on talking positive stuff with the guys and making sure that a lot of positive feedback is going back to the guys"

"DL method is the same for both sides; Obviously the rain didn't help the other day as the guys struggled with the ball the other day but its one of those things, swings-and-roundabouts - sometimes it works for you, sometimes it doesn't"

"Fakhar should be fit for the next game; he is a navy man so he should be tough enough to get through this"

"He landed on the ball in the field but when he batted, he batted bloody well so his thigh stiffened up overnight"

"So Pakistan batsmen need quick feet to handle the bounce; we also have brought over a slab to practice against exaggerated bounce"

"The pitch here is not the bouncy from what I have seen before bit I am sure given the success the seamers have had against us so far, they will try and make it as bouncy as possible"

"We haven't seen the best of this side yet"

"The batting has a lot more to offer so hopefully we will see that"

"We rate this NZ team very highly and in the field they are brilliant and they have all bases covered as they bat all the way down"

"We won the CT when we were down and out after the first game so no reason why we cant do it again"

I cannot be the only one who read this....

What things do we not need to work on then??

 

[Hasan123]

Need to look at another batting coach as well as some new additions with the bat. Don't think Grant is capable of coaching the modern way.

Would prefer an Australian batting coach.

 

[Abdullah719]

I cannot be the only one who read this....

What things do we not need to work on then??

The mental aspect.

 

[babajee]

Need to look at another batting coach as well as some new additions with the bat. Don't think Grant is capable of coaching the modern way.

Would prefer an Australian batting coach.

He’s been with us since 2014 right? And most of our batsmen still have the same old technical issues now

 

[Hasan123]

He’s been with us since 2014 right? And most of our batsmen still have the same old technical issues now

Tbf he can't do much with our current batsmen in LO. But someone like Maqsood or Mukthar, he didn't do much for them.

 

[Sirris]

Tbf he can't do much with our current batsmen in LO. But someone like Maqsood or Mukthar, he didn't do much for them.

If he can't do much for them why is he still around? Then I might as well be the batting coach. I too can hang around, talk to the media and do nothing.

 

[Sirris]

"We've got a few things to work on such as batting, bowling and fielding and hopefully we can get it right"

I guess they have been practicing playing football so far.

 

[Adnan_Ilyas]

Glad they are positive, come on boys fight hard

 

[ads101]

dont think grant is the problem. Fakhar new to the team doing great. Imam scored a century on debut. Malik while still not great has done better in these last few years than he ever has in the past despite ageing. the bowlers shadab,hasan, amir all doing better with the bat. Sarfraz was doing better for a while too. Babar of course doing grrat.

The main problems a batting coach cant. correct. he cant make sarfraz lose weight which is got to the state its impacting his game and ability to pick up singles which he used to be great at. Hafeez is just ageing and on his way out. Azhar never had the shots or game to suceed in loi, its just too big a problem to fix, he needs to fix it in domestic and even then not sure its possible.

Best thing we can do is just drop the no hopers at this stage which grant cant do anything with. Bring in the consistently high performing players in domestic eg haris,saad ali, usman etc to at least the squad. And strengthen our batting line up by means we have at our disposal ie play an extra batsman (allowing us to test out talent like saad etc) instead of an extra bowler, increasing reliance on part timers to make up the fifth lot of 10 overs. make shre out tailenders can bat ( most can, we might need to switch raees out for fahim) and introduce left-right combos especially at top of the order. Do things within our means ratger than praying and hoping A bunch of batsmen averaging 50 at sr 90 come out out of thin air.

Im mor concerned with whatever fitness and diets are implemented during training/between match play. dunno why so many guys are getting fat and unfit after they become part of the international team. its disgraceful. it should be the complete opposite.

 

[Dr_Green]

Utter nonsense by Grant. Mediocre cricketer and a mediocre coach, stealing a living without any appraisal.

He has no business in the team after the appointment of Arthur; needs to be offloaded.

Ever the optimist.....you must be a fun guy to be around...such negativity have you ever said anything positive about Pakistan cricket or is being negative a hobby... the less of these types of fans the better

He was a good cricketer and has proved himself to be a solid batting coach for Pakistan.. .his right they don't become a bad team overnight , just need a bit of confidence to handle the bounce and condition

 

[Markhor]

Utter nonsense by Grant. Mediocre cricketer and a mediocre coach, stealing a living without any appraisal.

He has no business in the team after the appointment of Arthur; needs to be offloaded.

Irrelevant. Good cricketers don't always make good coaches as Javed Miandad and Waqar Younis proved. Bob Woolmer wasn't exactly an ATG but had excellent coaching credentials. The fact Arthur asked Flower to stay on when his contract was due to expire last year shows he is a valued member of staff.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks - players like Azhar Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Shoaib Malik etc aren't going to turn into David Warner, Martin Guptill and Jason Roy no matter how much coaching you do. Hafeez and Malik aren't going to turn into fluent players of pace after 17 years of international cricket.

Where improvements have been made is with the youngsters - Flower has done a good job with Sharjeel Khan, Fakhar Zaman and Shadab Khan's batting to name a few. To be fair to Azhar, his Test record has been excellent since Flower was appointed.

In Tests, we have the third highest 4th innings average since his appointment. We have the second highest 1st innings average. Before Flower's appointment between Jan 2012 and Feb 2014, our average runs per wicket was 28.89. During Flower's tenure, its now 35.62. Our conversion rate has improved too - so much for stealing a living.

 

[Markhor]

What a load of rubbish statements from Grant. Firstly, he says 'Guys have struggled with the bounce', well if that was the case, why didn't Pakistan management send the team to New Zealand earlier to acclimatise to conditions and prepare few friendly matches against local teams? Secondly, ‘combination of hard work and training’, Pakistan team have always known to be mentally weak when put under pressure. For years we have been hearing this but not much has been done about this. Our batsmen are technically inept when playing on seaming and bouncy pitches. Thirdly, team management cannot use Fakar’s absence as excuse, when rest of the batsmen will take reasonability, are they in team due to their high rank links or nepotism. Players like Babar, Hafeez, Shoaib & Sarfraz need to should more responsibility and need to stop making useless excuses. I really expected hardline from Micky but he seems to have gone soft. Stop living over the CT win…. Wake up Team Pakistan…. I fear it will be clean sweep by New Zealand.

Last time I checked, Flower wasn't responsible for our scheduling. The man in charge is Sethi who's too busy chasing up MOUs and launching legal cases, while milking the glory from PSL and "bringing cricket home" - and to hell with everything else.

You can't teach Azhar Ali, Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik to suddenly become fluent strokemakers against pace bowling after so many years of international cricket (nearly two decade in case of the latter two). That's why you need to select dynamic and explosive batsmen which the selectors failed to do - they were too obsessed with "sticking to a winning formula".

Give Grant players like Sharjeel Khan, Fakhar Zaman, Shadab Khan, Fahim Ashraf and Hasan Ali, and you can see the improvements.

 

[Mamoon]

Irrelevant. Good cricketers don't always make good coaches as Javed Miandad and Waqar Younis proved. Bob Woolmer wasn't exactly an ATG but had excellent coaching credentials. The fact Arthur asked Flower to stay on when his contract was due to expire last year shows he is a valued member of staff.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks - players like Azhar Ali, Imam-ul-Haq, Shoaib Malik etc aren't going to turn into David Warner, Martin Guptill and Jason Roy no matter how much coaching you do. Hafeez and Malik aren't going to turn into fluent players of pace after 17 years of international cricket.

Where improvements have been made is with the youngsters - Flower has done a good job with Sharjeel Khan, Fakhar Zaman and Shadab Khan's batting to name a few. To be fair to Azhar, his Test record has been excellent since Flower was appointed.

In Tests, we have the third highest 4th innings average since his appointment. We have the second highest 1st innings average. Before Flower's appointment between Jan 2012 and Feb 2014, our average runs per wicket was 28.89. During Flower's tenure, its now 35.62. Our conversion rate has improved too - so much for stealing a living.

I know that you don’t have to be a good player to be a good coach. That is why I called him a “mediocre player AND a mediocre coach”.

Secondly, I am not interested in these numbers, because I don’t think Grant has had much of an influence. Most of these improved averages our because of our incredible home season in 2014-2015 thanks to Younis’ wonderful form, Sarfraz’s purple patch and Azhar coming of age.

Flower didn’t have much to do with that. As you said, you cannot teach old dogs new tricks. He could not have influenced Younis’ great form against Australia and New Zealand, and Azhar’s coming of age was always going to happen because he has now peaked as a batsman.

Moreover, if Sarfraz hit his purple patch because of Flower, why he is struggling now?

Flower was simply lucky to takeover at the right time. We have played on plenty of flat wickets in his tenure, and our batsmen continue to be sitting ducks in tough conditions.

Arthur’s appointment has made him surplus to requirements. We needed him during the Waqar era, but not anymore.

 

[Mamoon]

Ever the optimist.....you must be a fun guy to be around...such negativity have you ever said anything positive about Pakistan cricket or is being negative a hobby... the less of these types of fans the better

He was a good cricketer and has proved himself to be a solid batting coach for Pakistan.. .his right they don't become a bad team overnight , just need a bit of confidence to handle the bounce and condition

He was nothing special. His magnificent brother made him look better than he was.

Flower is in his comfort-zone here. He is not going to get a job at a better team than Pakistan, and he will continue to steal a living as long as there is no appraisal of his performance.