An old hand lends a hand

If there's one characteristic that has defined England's recent tours of Sri Lanka, it is attrition. Under Nasser Hussain's leadership in 2000-01, England clung to every fragment of every session, and clawed their way back from a hiding in Galle to produce hard-bitten victories in Kandy and Colombo. Three years later it was Michael Vaughan's turn to cling to the cliff face. His team mustered a brace of exhausting, straw-clutching draws in the opening two matches, but then lost their footing in the decisive final Test. Two series, two wins apiece, and scarcely an ounce of spare energy upon which to draw.

The message for the class of 2007-08 is simple. The challenge that awaits them in the coming four weeks will be, physically, one of the most draining they will ever encounter in their Test careers, but as Hussain's men showed in the revelry that followed their 2001 triumph, it could also be the most rewarding. The one thing that could count against them, however, is inexperience - Vaughan is the only veteran of both tours, while Paul Collingwood and James Anderson played only bit parts on the most recent trip. The rest are rookies, and no matter that they won the one-day series in October in impressive fashion, the exuberance of youth will not be sufficient to counter the genius of Muttiah Muralitharan.

Fortunately for England they have in their ranks a man who knows all about the art of battling beyond one's boundaries. Andy Flower made his name as the most stubborn nugget in a Zimbabwe side that was invariably outgunned but only rarely embarrassed. For a decade he fought tooth and nail to bring respectability to his country's cricket, and in so doing rose up the rankings to become recognised as the world's leading batsman. He's now England's batting coach, a somewhat incongruous appointment given the innumerable occasions he crossed swords with the English. But for this series above all, his knowledge is going to be invaluable.

Flower has a quiet and deliberate manner about him. He speaks slowly and lucidly, like a man who knows he has time to play his shots, and you can sense him weighing up the value of his every word. "I think we can beat them in this Test series, but to do that we're going to have to play out of our skins," he says. "We're going to have to play really skilful and resilient Test cricket, because there's going to be a lot of hard times and a lot of fluctuating fortunes. They have a very varied attack, with four very different bowlers and it's going to be very, very close."

To hear Flower talk of England as "we" comes as a surprise, not least to the man himself. "It's pretty bizarre, to be coming from a little government school in Harare to this," he says. "But I'm learning a hell of a lot, and it's really nice to be part of a really exciting period for English cricket. I've been watching these guys prepare, and I've been a part of what they do and how they think, and hopefully how they go on to win the series from here. I'm just a small part of a group all going in the same direction, and it's going to be a whole lot of fun."

Flower has been in and around the England set-up for two years now. He was Peter Moores' sidekick at the ECB Academy for two winters, and in May of this year, when Moores succeeded Duncan Fletcher as England coach, Flower retired from first-class cricket to take up a full-time role as assistant coach. It was not a career path he had envisaged. "I've never been one to plan ahead," he says. "I went into coaching at the academy because I thought it would be really interesting, and it was. And then this opportunity came up, and it's been fascinating. Every day I've been learning something new - in coaching, in management, in communication. It's a great way to be working."

It is not what Flower can learn that matters in the short term, however. It's what he can pass on to his charges. Apart from being one of the toughest nuts to crack on the international circuit, Flower was a supreme technical batsman in his own right, and in the opinion of many who witnessed his most triumphant performances - such as his tally of 540 runs for twice out in India in 2000-01 - he was one of the greatest players of spin of all time.

This, Flower attributes to the influence of two men: the former South Africa and Zimbabwe spinner John Traicos - "one of the most accurate offspinners I've ever come across" - and Dave Houghton, Flower's first Test captain and role model. "Traicos was a wily old fox who gave me a brilliant grounding in playing spin," says Flower. "We used to practise into the dark of the night, and he always used to bang on about picking length, and choosing my scoring areas, and how I was moving around the crease. He'd bowled against a lot of great players and he really knew his stuff.

"Houghton, meanwhile, was one of the best players of spin I've ever seen. I used to watch and copy him, and from him I learnt how to manoeuvre the ball, and how to get your body into position for certain shots. He taught me the sweep, the reverse-sweep, about hitting over the top, and shifting the momentum against the spinner so as not to let him settle. His lessons were invaluable."

There is a fine line between coaching and preaching, however, and for all that Flower has experience in spades to share with his England charges, he knows full well that the battles at Kandy, Colombo and Galle are not his for the fighting. "My experiences are good to call on, but most important are the players' experiences," he says. "Most of them have played Murali in Tests or county cricket, so they've got their own memories to call on. My job is merely to throw ideas around, and give them options and methods of how to play or think. But they've got to choose their own way. They live and die by their decisions."

Flower has another, more subliminal, role in the England squad, however. No other player in the tour party, not even Vaughan, has dug so deep into their soul in the quest for self-improvement. "I've always been interested in the processes you have to go through to gain success," says Flower. "When I used to research my own methods, I would look closely at my technique but also at my emotional well-being or mental strength. I wanted to do things differently. I wanted to train harder, concentrate for longer periods, and become more mentally resilient. I suppose that gave me the preparation to be a coach."

Either way, coaching was always in his blood. Flower's first contract with the Zimbabwe Cricket Union was not as a player but as a coach - he and his brother Grant worked five days a week around the schools and townships of Harare. Tatenda Taibu, a wicketkeeper-batsman and natural leader, who displays so many of Flower's indomitable traits, was one of his first pupils, along with Stuart Matsikenyeri and Hamilton Masakadza. "I've known all three of them since they were knee-high," Flower says. "They were lovely blokes to work with."

For now, he has an older but similarly enthusiastic band of cricketers to work with and alongside. Whatever the result of this month's series, he believes in the journey that Moores and his squad are undertaking. "There's huge scope for us in international cricket," he says. "There's much more capacity in the side than we are seeing, and I genuinely believe we can chase Australia. There's a huge gap in the rankings at present and that's about right in reality. But we're taking steps towards bridging that every day. Every practice we have, that's our goal, to make ourselves just that little bit better."