Flower's keeping slips under the radar because he was from Zimbabwe and so few people actually paid attention to it. If he was doing it for a bigger team it would have been infamous. It was a big point of complaint for Zimbabwe cricket fans at the time which is all you really need to know
I think the complaint seems to be more from a perspective that he should had focused on his batting more. Really, from back his time, most common opinion seems that he was decent. Not particularly great, but no way terrible like Akmal as well. Your primary criticism also seems to had been untidiness, not him dropping dollies or conceding byes.
Oh believe me, I don't trust people, especially politicians!!!
If Dujon was mediocre to spin, then Flower was mediocre to everything.
Dhoni was great to spin standing up to stumps.
I would still take Dhoni ahead of Flower if given the choice. The difference in keeping is bigger than the difference in batting. But the real answer in these situations will always be just play both with Flower not having to keep
I get the reasoning really to a T (and like, Dhoni being a mediocre keeper is a **** take anyways). But given I have better batters at hand, it's just not something I would do. I will prefer the additional batting over the fielding.
At this point you want to believe this so badly that you're just cherry picking what you want to accept.
Nothing of that sort really. And I can hardly say I am cherry picking when 3 people who watched Flower keep don't rate his keeping at all. Most sources do rate his keeping decent, which for the umpteenth time, is enough for me when the batting difference is this big. It's not so much bat first, as it's simply overall value, which I think Flower provides higher. It's not really like I am advocating for something crazy like Barry to be a top 10 bat of all time or anything here, just with enough competence, the batting gulf is way too big to overcome with keeping.
I recall the days of Junior Murray and Courtney Brown, who literally cost us matches by costly drops, Steve Waugh comes to mind.
He was averaging mid 50s. They didn't think he'd make more runs, they thought a different keeper would miss less chances.
Its a pity Taibu came along a bit later. He was quality.
Barry being a top 10 batsman is a less crazy take than Andy Flower being a top tier wicket keeper batsman.
I don't see how this is difficult to grasp.
Except bowling is the primary there. Keeping is hardly more important than batting anymore.
I recall Rishabh Pant winning us matches with the bat. Ofcourse a certain amount of runs can override a few errors. Pretending otherwise is ignorant.
Alright. But that was literally Zimbabwe though. They had a fair few players to be dropped always. Like had Pant been Zimbabwean, I expect most to vouch for a better keeper, as Pant so makes mistakes around and they had droppable players. Them still wanting a keeper missing less makes too much sense. They ofcourse I believe, didn't want him in place of Flower. Most of what I dug really points to Flower being decent though. Definitely could had made a few mistakes, but certainly no one called his keeping terrible back in the day, be it commentators or posters here. I think that's enough really here, given the batting difference.
This is not the consensus opinion that you believe it to be.
When did I called it consensus opinion again?? It's simply my opinion. Like practically, I don't see Knott playing for current India team, but that's hardly a sound way to compare players, as Pant won't had made England back then as a keeper. But the point stands, most team nowadays prioritises batting more than keeping. The reason I want Jurel to play, is because he is almost good enough to play as a batsman, though finding a spot is tough.
Of course they didn't want to drop Flower, they just didn't want him to keep if they had another reasonable option. Which didn't really happen until Taibu came along
