John Marshall Buchanan (born 5 April 1953) is the former World Cup winning coach of the Australia national cricket team and of Kolkata Knight Riders team in the Indian Premier League. John Buchanan is a King's Old Collegian (University of Queensland, Brisbane) and is also an old boy of The Southport School, located in Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. Buchanan is also known in cricketing circles as 'Ned Flanders', due to his similarity in appearance to the character in The Simpsons. Early career Buchanan had a brief first-class career with Queensland in 1978–79 in which he played in 7 matches and scored 160 runs. He also played league cricket in England including a spell at Hyde Cricket Club in Cheshire. Buchanan began his coaching career in England: he was player/coach/professional for Oldham in Central Lancashire league as well as Cambridgeshire in Minor Counties 1978 and 1979. Oldham won the League and Cup double in 1979 which was first time in over 40 years. Prior to his appointment as Australian head coach, he had five successful years as the coach of Queensland, during which time they won two Sheffield Shield titles, including the first in the state's history in 1994–95, and two Mercantile Mutual Cup titles. He also coached Middlesex in 1998. Australian coach Buchanan was appointed as Australian men's national coach in October 1999 to replace Geoff Marsh. He was considered an unlikely candidate given that he had not played at Test level as had his predecessors, Marsh and Bob Simpson. His initial results were very impressive, helping steer the team to unprecedented success, this included, at one point a record of 15 wins from 15 games played. However, his contributions have often been questioned by legends of the game including Ian Chappell, Sunil Gavaskar and even Shane Warne who played under him. The most common criticism has been that he inherited a very strong team and his presence just happened to coincide with their victories. Warne has consistently held that Buchanan tended to reinvent everything and complicate all aspects of the game. Buchanan, along with former captain Ricky Ponting, led the side to numerous successes, including a world-record 16 consecutive Test match victories and 23 ODI victories in world cup tournaments, Buchanan only not involved in the first one, a 2001 and 2002–03 Ashes domination winning both series 4–1, the 2003 ICC Cricket World Cup in South Africa, the 2004