29.10.07

Worse for Wear

There's a lot of talk in the media about Duncan Fletcher's memoirs, in which he tells some pretty shocking home truths about Andrew Flintoff's conduct as England captain in Australia last winter, including the revelation that he had to abandon a practice session after Flintoff turned up 'worse for wear', as the old cliche goes, after a heavy night on the lash.

I haven't read any of it so it's hard to comment in specific terms, but, in hindsight, it does look as though the decision to make Flintoff captain for the tour was mistaken. Andrew Strauss would have done a more astute job on the field and would have behaved himself a bit better off it.

A year on and they're not just out of contention for the role of skipper. They're both out of the team. Flintoff because of his continuing and increasingly concerning battle for fitness, Strauss because of the decline in form which he's suffered over the past eighteen months.

A penny for either of their thoughts today.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As and when Flintoff does come back though - and one assumes he's already not too thrilled with Vaughan about the Guardian interview, I wonder how he'll be. Bitterness tends to do things to instinct players, i suppose. On the other hand, if he's anything like Botham was in 1981 after all the humiliation preceding ...

Stuart said...

The decision to pick Flintoff as captain was seen as a mistake here in Australia prior to the series. But Fletcher does himself no favours (well, except monetary through increased books sales) with these revelations. Which coach wasn't doing his job to allow this to happen?

I can't stand Fletcher - he seems to be one of those annoying guys that takes the credit when anything goes right, but blames everyone else when it goes wrong.

Brian Carpenter said...

Thanks for the comments. Stuart, I couldn't agree more with your assessment of Fletcher. I personally don't have a problem with him telling his side of the story and saying what went on behind the scenes, but there's a lot of self-justification mixed in with the 'revelations'. As for Flintoff, we'll just have to see whether he's ever the same again. It looks unlikely, but then a year ago many respected journos and bloggers were saying that Vaughan would never play another Test.

Subscribe in a reader