Fire meets ice

Matthew Maynard's skill and temperament promised a long and rewarding England career but in eight Test innings he managed only 87 runs. He became one of the frustrating might-have-beens of England cricket. But hold on a minute. This judgement may prove seriously premature. It could be that the curtain is about to rise on Maynard's real England career - not as a batsman but as a coach. He has already worked with Duncan Fletcher in one-day internationals in Southern Africa over the winter and on June 9 he joined England's coaching squad full-time.

Maynard already had his foot in the door late in May when the ECB discussed the appointment of a second specialist coach, a batsman to complement Troy Cooley's bowling expertise. The scheme was Fletcher's and it forms part of a wider reorganisation of England's coaching. Instead of being just a finishing school for young cricketers of promise the Loughborough Academy will be the heart of the development programme for all the England squad. The idea is that old dogs can learn new tricks.

Maynard's presence with the one-day squad in South Africa will have looked good on his CV - which also shows that he captained Glamorgan to the County Championship in 1997 and to a string of successes in Sunday cricket. What might not have appeared on paper is that the coach in that Championship year was Duncan Fletcher. But that is very relevant. The pair became close and have remained friends and allies. When the history of this period in England cricket is written, it is conceivable that Maynard's role will be as Fletcher's protÈgÈ. Already idle speculators talk about him as the successor. Maynard is embarrassed and irritated at the suggestion. First things first: "I'd just like to get established in coaching," he says.

Before the start of the season Maynard said it would be his last for Glamorgan. He is 39 and has been a regular for 20 years. He was a local legend long before the end of his lifetime, having appeared in a Manic Street Preachers number called `Mr Carbohydrate'. ("Have you heard of Matthew Maynard/He's my favourite cricketer/I would rather watch him play than pick up my guitar/Than play with my guitar.") Maynard's aim was to leave county cricket as spectacularly as he entered it in 1985, when he reached an 82-minute century with three sixes in a row.

But Maynard is a fatalist and this spring the fates were at sixes and sevens. A rusty start with the bat against Warwickshire got much worse at Old Trafford, where conditions were arctic and he got a severe bout of pneumonia. He was in bed for a couple of weeks and lost more than a stone. By the time he got better England's management had decided to appoint him to the job he wanted. One consequence was that Maynard had played his last Championship game for Glamorgan, a miserable anticlimax at Edgbaston, where he scored 0 and 20.

Still, the England job was quite a compensation. Maynard had enjoyed his first stint as a specialist coach in Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa in the winter. He knows most of the England squad and gets on well with them. And he is a popular figure on the county circuit, one of the players - now in a minority - who like to chat with opponents in the bar at close of play. One of the attractions of his company is the strength of his opinions. "Matthew always challenged existing practices," recalls Hugh Morris, the ECB performance director and another former Glamorgan colleague.

There was criticism of the appointment. Mike Atherton did not like the job going to a player who had joined Mike Gatting's unauthorised and ill-fated tour to South Africa in 1989-90. After his Test debut in 1988 Maynard was not selected for the subsequent winter tour. Micky Stewart, the England manager, assured Maynard he remained in their thoughts but that is where he stayed. Maynard felt so strongly about being ignored that he went to South Africa when he was only 23. That led to a three-year Test ban.

He remains unapologetic: "I had a young family and I didn't know where my England career was going. It was a fairly easy decision to take." He did play Tests again, in the 1993 Ashes and on the following tour of West Indies, but when Fletcher arrived in Cardiff in 1997 Maynard's ambition was focused on Glamorgan.

Fletcher was an unknown quantity from Western Cape and did not say much to begin with. "He'd sit back, look, study. That's his style," says Maynard. "He says he hopes to get players 2% better. For me it was a belief thing. He showed me what I could do as a batsman and a captain. Some people have the X-factor, and he's one of them, although it would be totally wrong to try to copy him."

Quite the reverse. Argument became a productive element in their relationship. "I don't think I've ever been one to say `I agree, I agree'. We all have ideas on the game and they vary. Fletcher is willing to learn, to pick things up," says Maynard. "Perhaps he enjoyed the challenge of thinking outside the norm. We'd feed off each other, chatting for hours over a couple of bottles of wine. My missus would say `You're arguing again' but it was good stuff." Steve James, who observed both of them at Glamorgan, says: "Fletch likes Matthew because he thinks for himself and challenged him."

At the time Maynard spent two seasons with Otago in New Zealand as player/coach. Although he found combining both roles hard, he enjoyed the experience. After that he concentrated on turning Glamorgan into an accomplished one-day team, especially with the white ball. He explains: "We've become an attacking one-day side. The white ball, which moves more than the red ball, encourages that because we try to whack the shine of it. We don't sit back in the middle of an innings either."

Fletcher remembered his Glamorgan days fondly and nursed a hunch that Maynard would be a good coach. He first asked his former captain whether he would be interested in working with England a couple of years ago; Maynard replied that he had unfinished business at Glamorgan. Last August Fletcher tried again. This time Maynard was ready and his wife advised him to go for it. The appointment of an active county cricketer caught commentators off guard, though those who know Fletcher were not surprised. "He knows the people he trusts and he'll go back to the people he knows," says James. (As if to prove the point, James has been asked to ghost the Fletcher autobiography.)

Maynard found the players responsive. He was helping Marcus Trescothick even before the squad flew to South Africa and enjoys working with cricketers who are good enough to apply his advice. "You can try things with them. Suggest something new to a county player and he does the same old thing." His coaching concentrates on identifying small faults, some in technique and some in the head. "There's no secret formula. What you want is honesty and openness from the players." That requires trust and Maynard appears to have it. He will probably take fielding drills too, some of them dating back to Fletcher's time at Glamorgan. "If it's good, you don't mess with it." Evidently the experiment was a success: "Fletch thinks his hunch was justified."

The ECB does, however, intend to mess with the role of the Academy in Loughborough. From this winter its principal clients will be those eight or nine players from the 25-strong England Development Squad who are not touring, plus a small number of players on the fringe of this squad. "If someone's injured on tour, the replacement can hit the ground running. The Academy is the hub site for all high-performance work," says Morris.

The two specialist coaches will serve both the England team and the Academy. If last winter is a precedent, one will be abroad while the other works in Loughborough. Fletcher's coaching team will be completed by Tim Boon, who recently replaced Malcolm Ashton as the video analyst. Boon is not expected merely to record facts and film clips: besides identifying faults he will propose ways of putting them right.

These changes will increase Fletcher's authority by making the present needs of the England side the focus of the Academy. They will also change the role of Peter Moores, the Sussex coach who succeeds Rod Marsh as Academy director in the autumn. "He knew this was how it would be when he got the job," says Morris. Moores seemed to think the emphasis on England was a good idea when he was interviewed for the post.

While Maynard is working with England players he will continue to study for the Level 4 ECB coaching qualification, the most advanced grade. His inexperience is a second criticism of the appointment but Fletcher is not the sort who approves of Buggins' Turn. He is content to have Maynard learning on the job. And what might he achieve? Speaking as a loyal student of Fletcher's, Maynard refuses to raise hopes too high. "I'll do my best to improve their game by a per cent or two," he says.