England have Fletcher in sights (6 June 1999)

6 June 1999

England have Fletcher in sights

The Electronic Telegraph

Duncan Fletcher, a Zimbabwean with no Test experience, has emerged as the hot favourite to become the new England cricket coach.

In a surprise move, England are poised to turn to the man who coached Glamorgan to the 1997 County Championship to lead them into a new era following the humiliating failure of being knocked out of the World Cup before the Super Six phase. And, contrary to outgoing coach David Lloyd's wishes, they are going to appoint a foreigner.

Tomorrow a short-list of candidates to succeed Lloyd will be discussed by a working party set up by the England management advisory committee. Five names are on the list, names which make it apparent the ECB have realised that the cure for English cricket is not to be found entirely within our domestic game:

Bob Woolmer, South Africa's coach until the end of the World Cup, who played 19 Tests for England but might be described as a citizen of the world.

John Wright, the former New Zealand opening batsman who played for Derbyshire and coaches Kent.

Dav Whatmore, who played seven Tests for Australia before coaching Sri Lanka to the last World Cup, and now coaches Lancashire.

Jack Birkenshaw, who played five Tests for England when playing for Leicestershire, a county he has since coached twice to the championship.

Duncan Fletcher, the former captain of Zimbabwe and now Glamorgan's coach.

Woolmer was the early favourite, the big name sought by Lord MacLaurin and Tim Lamb, chairman and chief executive of the ECB respectively, who sent international teams director Simon Pack to South Africa in April to sound him out. But Woolmer has since fallen back with every statement that has stressed his need for a rest after the World Cup and his ambivalence towards the job.

The difficulties involved in finding a stand-in until after England's winter tour of South Africa have also told against Woolmer, who is now likely to combine a return to Warwickshire with heading an academy in South Africa.

As it is, England have had to fill the vacuum created by Lloyd's departure by asking David Graveney to continue in the same managerial position that he occupied during the World Cup, with the help of specialist coaches as and when required during the series against New Zealand.

The way is therefore open to the surprising choice of Fletcher - not a big name at all, but one who could have a big and beneficial impact on English cricket. He is the same age as Woolmer, 51, but whereas Woolmer has tired of the international road, Fletcher is ready to embark upon it as the culminating challenge of his career.

Fletcher does not pretend to have a magic wand to wave. What he does have is considerable presence and natural authority, and a far quieter, lower, profile than his more voluble predecessor. He works very closely with his captain to achieve best practices, and tells players what they need to know, not what they want to hear. Robert Croft once crossed swords with him, and emerged loud in his praise.

Fletcher's coaching is not based on any academic theory but has been developed pragmatically as he played for Zimbabwe in pre-Test years, then coached the University of Cape Town, Western Province and Glamorgan. His priority is to achieve the right spirit: "Most games are won in the dressing-room" he believes. "You have to have people who enjoy each other's company and success, it's all about creating an atmosphere." But there is much more to him than that - and so much more is needed by England if they are ever to maximise their resources.

Fletcher's other strengths are his ability to draw the best out of his players (Glamorgan's season has been marked by one career-best performance after another from inexperienced players); his insistence on discipline and hard work, yet also on the need to rest and have some other interest in life apart from cricket; and his perceptive analysis of technique, and not only that of his players. According to Steve James, Glamorgan's temporary captain: "He's brilliant at detecting the weaknesses in opponents."

It is an idle hypothesis to say that England would have done better in this World Cup if Fletcher had been in charge. Nevertheless, England's brittle ordinariness began with their top-order batting, and more might have been done than was done to remedy Nick Knight's method of playing with his hands a mile from his body, and Alec Stewart's footwork, and the captain's burnt-out batteries.

Fletcher might even have been able to get inside Graeme Hick's head and cure the tentativeness which still inhibits the maker of a hundred first-class hundreds when the pressure is greatest. He was, after all, not only Hick's captain when Zimbabwe played in the 1983 World Cup, but born and brought up on a farm just down the road from the Trelawney Estate where Hick first learned his batting.

It was by force of family circumstance that Fletcher became a student of the game. Sporting talent was showered on his four brothers and on his sister Ann, who captained Zimbabwe to the hockey gold medal at the Moscow Olympics. Duncan had to work that much harder to keep up as they played cricket with a tennis ball on their huge lawn, playing one-hand, one-bounce to develop fielding skills. He came to be rated the second-best fielder Zimbabwe produced after Colin Bland, and even now enjoys simply playing with a ball.

As a left-handed batsman and right-arm seamer, Fletcher's playing experience covered quite a wide spectrum, if only in southern Africa. If it is far more dogged resistance which England want from their batsmen, as they do, Fletcher scored 49 not out to save his second game for Rhodesia with a finger which had been broken in his first innings.

As for discipline, he insists everyone at Glamorgan must wear the same clothing off the field, bans the use of mobile telephones during play and meticulously records the £10 fine levied for each offence. Before the start of this season Glamorgan's players were told when net-practices would be held on non-match days so they could arrange their social life accordingly. But a player is exempted if he needs to rest.

It may be wondered if a foreign coach can identify closely enough with the England team. But Lloyd in his enthusiasm identified too closely, as did Graham Gooch last winter, and some calm detachment would not go amiss. Besides, Fletcher has crossed borders before, when he emigrated to South Africa in 1988 as his children had gone to university there and he feared the border might close. He was working in data-processing in Cape Town when the university approached him to be a coach part-time, which he did until he became Western Province's director of cricket in 1993.

Fletcher has managerial skills, too, which should not be wasted by England. Apart from organising Cape Town's league cricket, he likes to arrange sponsors and all the hotels and air-flights for the Western Province team to make sure of his players' welfare: he gave up as coach of South Africa's A team when he thought they were being treated unfairly. Some of the employees which the ECB keeps adding to its staff would become superfluous if Duncan Fletcher takes over the England team, gets rid of the excessive number of crutches they have to lean on and ends the long-running cycle of under-achievement.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph