Sir Ian Botham was a worrying influence on Andrew Flintoff during England’s Ashes tour of Australia last winter, according to Duncan Fletcher in the latest extract of his autobiography. Although Botham had taken Flintoff, the acting England captain, out for an allnight drinking session before a one-day international in Sydney, he was not respected by the other members of the England team, the former head coach claims.

“He thinks the players listen to him, but they do not,” Fletcher wrote of Botham. “Often you would go into the dressing-room and hear the players in exasperation saying things like: ‘Have you heard what Botham is saying about the wicket?’ Botham’s commentary has long caused problems.”

Fletcher said that during the World Cup this year the team had been invited to spend the day on a yacht belonging to Rod Bransgrove, the Hampshire chairman, but when the team was told that Botham would be present “a unanimous call of ‘no thanks’ rang out” and none of the players went.

Fletcher also turned his venom on another former England player-turned-commentator: Geoffrey Boycott, who is criticised for writing “a litany of scornful stuff” about the coach in his newspaper columns.

“I thought that he had his facts wrong and did not understand what I was doing,” Fletcher said. The coach and the commentator had a blazing argument on the telephone before England’s series in Pakistan in 2005 when Boycott had tried to arrange a game of golf in Cape Town with Fletcher and Bob Woolmer, the Pakistan coach at the time.

“I could hold back no longer,” Fletcher wrote. “I tore into him, asking him how he had the audacity to phone me when he had so maliciously criticised me on a regular basis. I have to be honest and say I was quite rude to the man.”

Fletcher said that Boycott, like Botham, was not respected by the England team and that it was a frequent complaint in the dressing-room when Boycott tried to get players to join him for dinner: “What he would do is pester them until they joined him and as the individual was off to dinner you could hear the rest shouting ‘good luck’ sarcastically.”

A third broadcaster to attract the wrath of Fletcher in the extracts serialised in a newspaper is Henry Blofeld, the veteran commentator on Test Match Special, with whom Fletcher had a public argument in a Leeds restaurant.

Again outraged by critical comments about his coaching, Fletcher said that on seeing Blofeld in the restaurant he went to remonstrate with him and received a volley of abuse. “He did not even greet me but instead just bellowed ‘F*** off,’ ” Fletcher said.

Blofeld said last night that “the spat was a great laugh” and that he wished Fletcher had “had a go back at me and then we could have had a good laugh and, who knows, become friends”. Blofeld said that he had been annoyed because Fletcher had ignored him when he visited the commentary box.

After the revelations from Fletcher yesterday that Flintoff had appeared for a team practice in Sydney last winter while still under the influence of drink, it was claimed last night that the all-rounder has not touched alcohol since the summer.

Sources close to the player said that the fallout from the “Fredalo” saga, when he was found to be drunk during the World Cup, had affected Flintoff and made him change his ways.