Why are England a better team now?

I think apart from the hard work that ENG have put in, Andy Flower has had a big role to play in England's rise. He has identified the right players and backed them to deliver, that is very important. Earlier we used to see so many players turning out for ENG every series and now it is like we already know well in advance what the ENG line up is going to be, that is how stable ENG have become and the bench strength is pretty good too.

Edited by sam_ahmed - 24 September 2011 at 3:17pm

The systems in place from junior level right up to the test team is first class - something that the ECB can take the credit for.  The players that have progressed through the system and into the test side have shown the qualities that Flower sees as vitally important. On the flip side , he also recognises flaws in the make-up of some players and they are told where they fall short. If those areas aren't addressed he's ruthless and those players are discarded.  Those faults can be technical , pyschological or physical and all are as important as each other. Samit Patel was told he was unfit and overweight and he was very slow to react to that - he didn't feature in any of Flower's sides until he turned it around. He's still not the fittest of players in the setup , but the improvement in his conditioning is easy to see.  Alistair Cook had real problems nicking off to the slips and whilst he wasn't dropped , it was getting close!  Real graft in the nets with Gooch straightened him out and we all saw what that hard work brought in Australia. Ravi Bopara is a natural , but maybe mentally he's not been quite there.  I think he's playing with more freedom now , the shackles are falling off and we might well see him pushing for Morgan's test place , come the new year.

This current England Team has quality batting line up and can score runs on any kind of Pitches in the world that makes their batting line up best, as well bowling they have best bowlers in the world right now and all of them are capable of taking wickets on regular intervals. Another reason for the teams no1 ranking is their fielding hardly we can see them dropping catches. 

Another thing that's definitely helped is that the system seems to put faith in the players much more than they used to.  Nowadays it's very rare that they make any changes in personnel unless forced to through injury.  Gone are the days when two poor matches in a row would see you dropped.  With the possible exception of Trott, every single player has had a real lean spell at some point in the last couple of years, yet they are rarely, if ever, dropped.  The continuity and trust clearly pays dividends and have made the team mentally strong.  Form is all about confidence and the current set up seems to be much more patient, which means that good form and confidence is more likely to follow...

Only flaw of this English team is the weakness on the dustbowls.  It will really be interesting to see SA vs Eng.  Finn, Anderson, Broad, Tremlett, Bresnan, vs Steyn, Morkel, De Lange, Philander.  There is going to be some serious pace and high quality fast bowling on show, not to mention very classy batsman in Amla, De Villers, Kallis, Trott, KP, Cook etc.