KP: Flower lost me...he didn’t think that I cared

KEVIN PIETERSEN has rubbished the influence of Andy Flower on England’s modern Ashes success and rise to the world’s No 1 Test team, claiming predecessor Duncan Fletcher was the better coach. Flower’s CV included three straight wins over the Australians between 2009 and 2013, as well as a 2-1 away win in India and England’s maiden global limited-overs crown — the World Twenty20 in 2010. But in the Sky Sports documentary series KP: Story of a Genius, Pietersen argues that Flower was blessed with favourable circumstances. ‘Australia was rubbish. He had amazing players. You name the players in our team. They were on fire,’ Pietersen said. Only last week, in an exclusive interview with Sportsmail, Flower revealed he was open to shaking hands and having a drink with a man said to be disconnected from the team during his final throes as an international player — the humiliating 5-0 whitewash by Australia in 2013-14. Pietersen, however, is evidently in no mood for conciliation. ‘Why was I disengaged? What had led up three, four, five years before that?’ he said. ‘Don’t you think that a strong leader or a strong coach would have been able to say: “You know what? What’s been happening in this dressing room is b ******* ”. ‘Do you think Duncan Fletcher would have allowed that to happen? Duncan Fletcher was England’s greatest coach.’ The South African-born batsman’s 158 at the Oval, his maiden Test hundred that secured the urn in 2005 after a 16-year Australian monopoly, was made during Fletcher’s tenure. But some of his major career triumphs came under Flower, another Zimbabwean. Pietersen said of a coach he famously dubbed the Mood Hoover: ‘Just the way he engaged with me from the start, he completely lost me. He didn’t think I cared. He challenged me on so many different things. ‘I just thought: “Dude, I don’t need you in my life”. Cricket is a team game made up of individuals. Don’t treat every single person the same.’ In the five-part television series, to be screened during every Test, Andrew Strauss — whose own rocky relationship with Pietersen is well documented — countered: ‘To say Andy wasn’t a great coach would be a long way off the mark.’