Settling old scores

English cricket was in a desperate state seven years ago. The players had just been booed off the field after defeat at home by New Zealand. Team morale was poor, while there was little organisation and no vision.

To the rescue came Duncan Fletcher, a little-known coach from Zimbabwe. He had few connections at the top of the England game, and employed his own methods. Fletcher turned out to have a remarkable knack for spotting the international potential of apparently middling players in the county game: Marcus Trescothik, Andrew Strauss, Michael Vaughan and Simon Jones are some of his personal picks. He had a quiet and inscrutable manner, preferring to guide his players rather than instruct. The England cricket captain Michael Atherton, a very good judge whose international career was drawing to a close when Fletcher arrived on the scene, is adamant that Fletcher was ‘the best professional coach England have had’.