Dunkin’ Duncan

So Andrew Flintoff’s dad is angry that Duncan Fletcher has told the world about his boy’s drinking habits. And Geoff Boycott is angry at what he regards as Fletcher’s “hypocrisy” in letting a few cats out of the bag after spending half a dozen years keeping everything behind closed doors. And David Graveney’s a bit peeved at being painted as something of a slippery, two-faced arch-pragmatist. And Chris Read is doubtless feeling a mite aggrieved at having had his suitability for the loftiest stages questioned. You don’t say. Wow.

The Daily Mail isn’t one of the planet’s best-selling newspapers for nothing. They know what they’re doing in Kensington. Snapping up serialisation rights to the former England coach’s autobiography was a guaranteed winner. Here was the perfect subject: a scorned public figure with a year’s salary and a hefty publisher’s advance in his pocket, nothing to lose and an axe or 50 to grind.

Boycott’s displeasure is the most laughable. As he admits himself, he wasn’t above firing a few darts during the course of his own literary ramblings. Like Fletcher, only immeasurably more so, Boycott felt as if it was him against the whole wide world (bar his mum and a portion of the Headingley faithful). That’s what made his books so readable and engrossing, regardless of one’s sympathies. Given that sporting autobiographies almost invariably throw up more anodyne tosh than the average party conference speech, we should be grateful for the exceptions.

Besides, even if he has actually revealed very little that we haven’t heard or suspected before, why shouldn’t Fletcher have his say? It may all be somewhat self-serving, but so what? Surely, having been constrained and discreet for so long, he is entitled to give his point of view. That he should have kept those lips firmly buttoned while he was in charge of the England dressing rooms and tour buses went with the territory. He was evasive, yes, but, in declining either to draw attention to himself or criticise players publicly, he was only doing what you or I would do in his shoes. Those particular shoes, of course, being those of the foreign coach of a national squad, England’s first such in a major team sport. He was certainly a more robust advertisement for Zimbabwe than Sven was for Sweden.

Fletcher’s most serious complaint, about the panic-stricken response to England’s Ashes debacle, is also well-founded. Thanks in no small part to media overkill, the hand-wringing dismay that greeted that 5-0 massacre was understandable, even forgivable. Much as we Poms tried to kid ourselves, the facts remain: muddle-headed selection, opponents who just happened to be one of the greatest sides ever to grace a greensward, vengeance-hungry home crowds and the weight of excess expectation were always going to prove too potent an antidote to English hope. To launch an inquiry into the health of the game back home, less than 18 months after those same opponents had been vanquished in one of the most memorable of all Test rubbers, was knee-jerkiness at its most repugnant.

The result of all this navel-gazing, the so-called Schofield Report, headed by the former chief executive of the European PGA, seems merely to have created a couple more layers of authority at the ECB while emphasising how vast the gulf remains between cricket and thoroughly individual pursuits such as golf. Sir Clive Woodward, a man steeped in team culture and club versus country squabbles, might have brought something worthwhile to the party, but Ken Schofield, ex-Holy Roman Emperor of the world’s most selfish sport? Pur-lease!

How soon we forget. Before Fletcher brought his forward presses and clamped lips aboard, England had not won a Test series in Pakistan since 1962, nor in South Africa since 1965, nor in the Caribbean since 1968. Never had they won a rubber in Sri Lanka. That all these droughts ended on Fletcher’s watch, thanks in no small part to his technical innovations against spin and that insistence on favouring players of a multi-dimensional nature, was anything but coincidental.

I’m not suggesting he should have kept his job. His time had come. He’d done his bit. If that Ashes triumph represented a career-defining peak, injuries and sudden loss of form ravaged any medium-term plans. Come next month’s Tests in Sri Lanka, there may be just five survivors of the XI that beat Australia at Trent Bridge in 2005: Michael Vaughan, Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen, Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard – and lack of match fitness may keep out the last two. A new team had to be rebuilt far sooner than anticipated, which meant checking out the counties’ wares, an option Fletcher was ill-placed, not to say ill-disposed, to take. Too quick to make up his mind, too slow to admit errors, stubbornness nobbled him, as it can be relied upon to do with those who enjoy prolonged success so much their egos prevent them from adapting to changed circumstances. Had Peter Moores not been at the helm, Owais Shah, Ryan Sidebottom and Graeme Swann would not be limbering up for five-day duty.

The major casualty in all this, sadly, is Andrew Strauss. Had Flintoff not been handed the captain’s stripes for Australia, a decision fit to rank among the most grievous selectorial cock-ups in the boob-riddled annals of English cricket, it is difficult to imagine that the Middlesex man would now be preparing for a winter in Ealing. While skippering the side to victory against Pakistan, he had done little wrong, and quite a lot right. Flintoff’s suitability, on the other hand, had already been brought into question when he overbowled himself against Sri Lanka at Lord’s. Imran Khan and Richie Benaud may have defied such a generalisation, but genuine all-rounders find life too easy to make good international captains.

Granted, perhaps Strauss has been found out by a few bowlers, especially those happy to feed that compulsive hook, but he strikes me as too intelligent not to be able to come up with an alternative strategy. Unfortunately, having to suppress his disappointment over the captaincy, not something Boycott was ever shy about doing, may well have undermined the pace of his recovery.

Unlike the now unemployed Fletcher, Strauss has kept schtum, albeit less out of choice than contractual obligation. But what was the worst he could have said? That the decision to appoint Flintoff was misguided but that he’d have to lump it? Blimey. Stop the presses. Alert the libel lawyers. I’ll bet Strauss would have felt better for getting it off his chest; Mrs Strauss too, not to mention the family cat.

One can only conclude that the world would be a better place if those of us gazing into that goldfish bowl, let alone its inhabitants, were treated like adults.