There are several reputations that will not recover from Duncan Fletcher’s
foray into publishing. Inadvertently, one of them is his. The man has always
had the unfortunate appearance of a Rhodesian police commander, with his
unsmiling visage and impenetrable sunglasses, but in print he comes across
as weak, weak, weak. He makes significant decisions based on tomorrow’s
headlines, and ducks and distances when he should confront and stand up to
be counted. England won the Ashes under Fletcher, but from this revised
vantage point it is hard to see how. If boldness of thought characterised
his tale of how the Ashes were captured (Ashes Regained: The Coach’s Story),
only Dutch courage permeates the pages of his second autobiography, Behind
The Shades.
The nerve and daring of a true leader is now missing and it is confusing as
Fletcher is clearly a respected, capable coach. Yet here is a revelation
from book one. On the morning of Monday, September 12, 2005, the final day
of the fifth and decisive Ashes Test, Fletcher says he had breakfast alone
and while walking back to his room considering the significance of the day
began to retch. England won the Ashes that afternoon, so the anecdote is
viewed sympathetically, the hatchet-faced man of steel at last showing his
human side, before inspiring his team to a momentous victory.
Now imagine that recollection told from the perspective of an England defeat
(which there might well have been had Shane Warne not dropped Kevin
Pietersen on 15, the batsman going on to make 158). Fletcher would have been
cast as a flapper who spent the morning throwing up, before his team blew it
and no damn wonder with leadership like that. This brings us up to date, a
picture emerging of a coach with his head no longer held high, but perched
over the edge of the toilet bowl, waiting for the next dry heave.
The publishers may think Andrew Flintoff is the casualty of Fletcher’s lurid
retelling of the 2006-07 Ashes campaign, but they are mistaken. Flintoff
emerges as an infuriating individual, easily led (by the equally
exasperating Ian Botham on occasions) and irresponsible and Fletcher, who
clearly felt very let down by his excesses, must have taken great
satisfaction in exposing and humiliating him. He may even feel it is for his
own good, if disclosure forces Flintoff to alter his behaviour or stops
members of the public (and Botham) delighting in plying him with drink and
misguided hospitality during his binges.
Yet the most troubling picture to emerge is that of a coach paralysed by fear.
When Flintoff arrived for fielding practice in Sydney on the eve of a
one-day international unable to throw or catch the ball after an allnight
session with Botham, Fletcher’s thoughts are clouded by press reaction if
the captain is disciplined and dropped. “I had already been targeted by the
media,” he writes. “What would they do now if I demoted a national hero?”
Well, considering that national hero had recently led his team to a 5-0
Ashes whitewash, my guess would be: not much.
If Fletcher had been bold enough to explain why the captain was in trouble, he
might even have been able to rescue a positive from a negative, sending a
clear message to England cricketers present and future, that the national
team were not an extension of the Old Soakonians fourth XI and if players
were to be paid like athletes, they would be expected to behave like
athletes, too. Fletcher did not do that. He bottled it. Stayed stewing in
his room – his words – and did nothing until the matter of Flintoff’s
indiscipline came to a head during the World Cup.
Fletcher made few attempts to engage the media, which is fine, but allowed his
actions to be determined by them, which is not. Having kept the press at
arm’s length, he had little clue about their workings – apparently, he is
very surprised his accusation that the most famous English cricketer is a
drunk is getting such play in the serialisation of his story – and was
therefore at a disadvantage when predicting the potential reaction to
disciplinary sanction against his captain. Had he gone with his instincts,
he would have been surprised.
No professional, no journalist and certainly no supporter would champion the
right of a player to be sozzled on England duty. Before the 1998 football
World Cup, when Glenn Hoddle left Paul Gascoigne out of his squad, the
decision was at first hotly debated. The next day, Hoddle gave a press
briefing in which he responded to another round of questions with disarming
honesty. Referring to his most recent performance in a friendly against
Belgium, when Gascoigne was clearly struggling for fitness for reasons that
are with hindsight wholly apparent, Hoddle asked the company to suspend
note-taking for a second. “Come on, lads,” he said, pleadingly. “You all saw
him. What would you have done?” Unable to find a single person who wanted to
take on the World Cup with a key midfield player possessing the engine of a
pub footballer, the subject was concluded. The next day, Hoddle received a
unanimously favourable press, simply by offering the logical truth. A shame
he did not embrace it more often.
So in taking action against Flintoff in Australia, providing he had honestly
explained his reasons, Fletcher would have been lauded as a decisive leader
who addressed a serious problem head on, despite its awkwardness. Instead,
he looks like a small man, settling scores and telling tales out of school
and for profit; and because he did not deal with Flintoff’s disruptiveness
at the time, it continued and reached the public domain in a more harmful
way.
The title of the book, Behind The Shades, is clearly intended to signify
insight and revelation, but what is coming through repeatedly is that the
dark lenses hid frightened eyes. Flintoff is made captain because Fletcher
frets that he will be a hindrance otherwise. That is no basis for such a
decision. A cricket captain is not a figurehead as in football, he is the
brain of the operation and here was a player whose tactical ability,
self-discipline and man-management skill under pressure Fletcher admits
doubting. Read on and he gets the job for the sake of a quiet life.
Sometimes, this appears to be Fletcher’s priority.
His recounting of the Pakistan ball-tampering controversy contrives to sell
out Darrell Hair, the umpire, with its timidity. Having made it clear that
he could not understand how Pakistan were getting reverse swing so early in
the match, Fletcher goes to see the umpires before play on the fourth day at
the Brit Oval. “It was not my primary intention to speak to them about the
ball,” he simpers, which is not the same as saying it was not his intention,
but does not place him in the same camp as those who thought the touring
team were cheating, and have subsequently been hounded out of Test cricket.
While there, though, it occurred to him he should have a look at the ball.
Why, exactly, unless he thought something untoward was happening? And that
is how the story progresses, with the continued inference that Fletcher was
suspicious of Pakistan’s behaviour, without offering the genuine commitment
that would make him a brave ally of the scapegoat, Hair.
For a man often cited as a disciplinarian, Fletcher does not appear
particularly tough. For a man credited with shaking English cricket from its
slumber, he does not appear particularly strong-minded. On the evidence
presented so far - and this is the serialisation, not the whole book,
although the tone is apparent - rather than developing a greater
understanding of the trials of modern sports management, one is left
recalling how slender was the margin of victory in the 2005 Ashes (the
English wins at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge and the draw at the Oval were all
tight matches) and what impact simple home advantage, rather than genius
coaching, had.
Fletcher has until now been regarded as an innovator, but if he is recast as a
decent coach who got lucky with a good set of players one summer, it will
have been his own doing. What is plain is that English cricket is still
searching for its revolutionary, the modernising leader who will remove the
game from its social club past. While burying Flintoff, Fletcher admits that
one of his senior management team, Kevin Shine, was also out on the eve of
the match against Canada in the World Cup. Shine is excused, as a first-time
offender; but if the coaches were at the bar, why should the players think
they were doing wrong?
On a tour to the West Indies in 2003, when Glenn McGrath went berserk after
losing a crude sledging exchange with Ramnaresh Sarwan, the resilient
batsman, the response of Cricket Australia’s chief executive in refusing to
indulge his main strike bowler spoke volumes. “The team needs to be able to
cope with situations when things aren’t going their way,” he said. “If you
can’t carry yourself in the true spirit of the game at those times, you need
to have a good look at yourself.”
When Fletcher confronted Geoffrey Boycott on the telephone over some comments
Boycott had made in his media work, he put the receiver down, regretted it
instantly and phoned Nasser Hussain for advice. Behind The Shades? He
should have called it Behind The Sofa.
