Ambidextrous but writing (and bowling!) hand: right (most probably), b. 1968

Andy Flower was my childhood hero growing up: the sheer tenacity and never-say-die spirit of his as well as his extraordinary stamina and his ability to single-handedly make a fist of it was allied with his extraordinary talent playing spinners, especially playing sweeps.

And hence, with this knowledge above about why I chose to study Andy Flower’s hands, if anyone who knows him is reading this, please reach out to him: because there is something serious to tell. I have a grainy but closely focused photo of his right-hand palm but from many years back. Maybe the hand has changed in the meantime, and I fervently hope so. Because what the photo I have with me is showing is that at the age of around 56, some illness in his body, either already detected or undetected, could prove dangerous, even fatal. So if anyone reading this does know him, please reach out to him and ask him to get check-ups: he is now 55, around that age. The following is the photo I am basing this on, and I don’t know when it was taken.

(Undated photo of Andy Flower’s right hand)

The intersection of his Mercury line with his life line and both having similar weights, both having lost some vitality, makes this a precarious case in this hand at least, and I do hope his hands have changed—for the better. The picture is too grainy for me to try to figure out what health concerns he could have.

Let us look now at the hand itself, something which I would normally discuss first. It is a large hand and what one may call as a ‘fire’ hand. Thus, this is a person full of energy, slightly impatient but still well receptive (i.e., a decent listener), and restless to some extent. A very striking feature of his hand is the extraordinary bend of his Jupiter and Apollo fingers, to go with a strongly bent tip of the Saturn finger. I would not have thought so, given Andy Flower’s projected personality, but this seems to be a man with a strong sense of insecurity about his identity and also some depression, and at the same time maybe someone imbued with a strong sense of duty. In a way, this sense of duty compensates for the insecurity he has within. He probably had a shy childhood, judging from the bend of his index finger, confirmed also by the joined head and life lines during his childhood time. He seems creative, but at the same time creative in a serious style. Given also how his Apollo finger top two phalanges taper and thin out a bit (which also shows that he is quite responsive when it comes to aesthetic things), his aesthetic taste even could be a bit on the melancholic or dark side! What also is noticeable in his hand is a very excellent Mercury finger, the only finger, too, not counting the thumb, that is standing without a bend. Great communication skills, good business and tactical acumen. For the thumb, let us look at another photo.

(Undated photo, but taken by November 2019, of Andy Flower’s right hand)

The thumb is strong, indicating a strong ability to self-discipline, confirmed also by the thumb’s tall phalange being good. The will power is good, if ever one wanted any proof of that after his cricketing exploits. The head line is showing that he started understanding himself quite well at around the age of 15 or so. ESPNcricinfo biography tells me that this must have been the time when he started playing for a club called Old Georgians, even getting picked for their first team. This probably was a strong confidence booster for him, allowing him to emerge from his shyness or doubts about himself and to be Andy Flower. The head line is straight with no slope and the quadrangle is uniformly a bit on the narrow side, thus someone less likely to be a romantic or mystic, someone likely to not believe in palmistry, for example! At the same time, his Luna is highly developed, thus his creativity is again considerable: so he may not be a romantic, but he is innovative. This strong Luna, when everything else in the hand is good, as is the case here, is also usually a good indicator of good fame and success. His lower Mars is also good: he is a fighter!

The fate line shows a self-made man but at the same time it starts very close to the life line, indicating a strong influence of his family in the career he came to adopt. On reading his biography again, this indeed seems to be the case. His ‘main’ career also seems to end at around the age of 38, and a parallel career takes over, and as we know, this did happen: first the most successful wicketkeeper-batsman the cricketing world has known, then the career of a very successful coach. The heart line does appear a bit doubtful with respect to health or blood circulation, again from around the age of 56 onwards, but judging age on the heart line is a difficult task anyway, plus I don’t have any good photos of his hands, so I will not go much into that. Forget good ones, I don’t even have grainy ones of his left palm, the hand with which he used to bat!

Disclaimer: These are only my own interpretations from the corpus of photos of public figures available in public domain. These should neither be construed as any claim to truth nor any aspersions on any person’s character.