Coach Fletcher

Indias new cricket coach is clearly not a man who stands aloof from his teams circumstances. Duncan Fletcher is reported to have said of the last day of an Ashes Test in 2005: It hit me. Suddenly at that moment the magnitude of this day must have come crashing down on my body. I began retching. But his track record is certainly encouraging. Having failed to persuade Gary Kirsten to stay on longer,the BCCI seems to have traced back the Kirsten cricketing gene to his former coach,Fletcher. In fact,on his first coaching job,he got Kirsten to choose cricket over rugby at university.

Fletcher is credited with many turnarounds. As the coach of a flustered,fumbling England,he got the team its first series win in the Windies in over three decades and the Ashes triumph of 2005. India,of course,are hardly demanding a turnaround,they are the one-day world champions besides being the top-ranked Test team. But its been a curious feature of Indian cricket in recent years that its fortunes are seen to be so closely associated with the coach. And Fletcher will obviously pick lessons from the recent past.

John Wright remade the team,after the match-fixing scandal had left it in such disarray,and upgraded fitness and practice regimens. His successor,Greg Chappell,got too closely involved in personality clashes and ended up being defeated by the terrible lows the team hit by the end of his truncated tenure. Kirsten,a man who resolutely kept away from the public glare,is currently a hero not only because the World Cup returned to India on his watch. Cricketers V.V.S. Laxman for instance mark him out as the catalyst for better averages. Fletcher should read that record fine,but hed do well to remain less excitable.