Andy Flower may need nurturing by ECB to keep India at bay

The news that Andy Flower may be on India's shortlist as they seek a coach to replace Gary Kirsten, whose last gig with the team was the successful World Cup final, is hardly earth-shattering. Kirsten's achievements notwithstanding, it is Flower who may be considered the most sought-after director of cricket after England's immaculate Ashes campaign. No need to get Poirot on the case: the surprise would be if he was not being touted speculatively as a candidate. It is not a story, it is a no-brainer.

In the past the England and Wales Cricket Board has sometimes been slow to react to situations of this nature. It was roundly condemned for not securing the long-term services of the bowling coach Troy Cooley, who then took up the equivalent position with Australia. Although events proved that it was no disadvantage to England, it was nonetheless handled hamfistedly. Not this time, though. This is a situation that Flower's employers will have seen coming from the moment Kirsten announced his intention to return to South Africa. But an intensive organisational winter of the kind just endured by Flower offered no appropriate occasion to mull over contractual considerations. Besides, that is not Flower's way. Time enough to mull things over after his break, on skis and otherwise.

There are further rumours surrounding Kirsten and the amount of money he was offered to stay, with seven-figure sums, in US dollars, being mentioned. That, of course, is not inconsiderable if true, although if money talked that loudly Kirsten might have changed his mind. He was walking away from an environment that, while rewarding, could be claustrophobic. And, eventually, the tail begins to wag the dog. John Wright found this and pretty much lost the will to fight the inappropriate level of influence of Sourav Ganguly and the Indian galácticos. When Greg Chappell succeeded Wright, he did so believing that he would not have been given the role without Ganguly's say-so. Chappell had coached the Indian captain out of a slump on a tour of Australia. "Maybe he thought I would be his mate and support him," Chappell told me during his time in India. He tried to break the cartel and eventually found it too much.

Kirsten's time has been calmer but, I would venture, he has been no less compliant in the end than his predecessors: I doubt you tell Tendulkar, Dhoni, Sehwag, Dravid or Laxman what to do and when.

Flower, by contrast, is in total control of what he does. Is there any sound reason why Flower would want, if asked, to abandon his England role and take up that with India? None that I can think of. He is very settled living near Stratford-upon-Avon. He is paid pretty well by the ECB and, while having the same desire as any normal person to earn a good living for his family, he is, in my experience, not avaricious.

When, in the Caribbean a couple of years ago in a temporary role, he finally made up his mind to apply for the full-time job he did so not as a means of personal aggrandisement or to seek a higher profile on the route to something else. He did so because after his brief period in temporary charge he had come to the conclusion that he could make a difference. Knowing what he would about the machinations of the Indian system, and what I know about them from my conversations with Chappell, I doubt if he would ever see the Indian job in quite the same way. And the idea that he should relocate his family to India, and then perhaps spend even more time away from them than he does now, would be anathema to him.

The ECB would be right to be concerned that its diamond should not be purloined by a third party, be it India or anyone else. Flower's relationship with the ECB is as a staff employee, with all the contingent protective rights that this brings. It is unlikely that this locks him into a fixed term. The board may well be looking to change that, tying him into a fixed-term deal with an option for extension.

Of most concern, however – and this is something I've written about before in this column – ought to be the prospect that the intensity of the scheduling could prove too debilitating for him to last the course unless he can be protected from himself. He was an angry man, with no small justification, when confronted with the itinerary between the end of the Ashes and the World Cup. Now he will insist on having some input into scheduling. Most pertinently, though, he has to be persuaded that the quality of the backroom staff he has gathered is sufficient for things to run smoothly were he to absent himself from a tour here and there.

Keeping Flower will not be the problem: keeping him sane may be.