Quiet end for the silent revolutionary

One cannot help but notice the cyclical nature of Duncan Fletcher's reign as England coach. Not only did it neatly coincide with two full turns of the international wheel, but it ended as it began, with gutless batting and defeat to South Africa. Yet no England fan, however embittered by the downturn in fortunes since 2005, could make the glib assertion that English cricket has also come full circle, and is back where it was when he started in 1999.

The vagaries of the international schedule have dictated that the last three World Cups have all followed on from failed Ashes campaigns, away from home, with the ensuing result unerringly dismal. The fact that this is the second time Fletcher presided over such a sequence, along with the general malaise which has descended on England over the last 18 months has sparked a call for change so loud that even Fletcher, so often stubborn in the face of criticism, could not ignore.

Even if England had come home with the Ashes urn in one hand and the World Cup in the other, there was a good chance that we would have seen the last of Fletcher. For this winter represented the chance for him to make an indelible mark on the history of English cricket. In Test matches, he has achieved almost everything, beating all-comers on home soil, and leading successful ventures to Asia, South Africa and the Caribbean. To have retained the Ashes and emulated the feat of Mike Gatting's team on the corresponding tour 20 years ago would have been his crowning achievement, while a successful World Cup campaign would have dispelled all the criticism of England's one-day form throughout his reign.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. During happier days, especially the glory run in 2004-5, Fletcher was always a background figure in the public eye, with his influence behind closed doors. He may have alienated the press to an extent with his attitude, but the results were always good enough to keep the criticism at a manageable level. Recently, with performances and results on the decline, his methods have increasingly come under scrutiny. His two most high profile selections on the Ashes Tour, those of Giles and Jones over Read and Panesar were castigated, even though the reason behind them, that of strengthening the lower-order batting, had been heralded as one of his legacies. Yet he was wrong; the basis for the selections was sound, the logic misapplied.

Ever since he put his eggs in the unpopular basket back in Brisbane, he has been fighting against a tirade of criticism, making a difficult winter even more trying. It is sad that the man who has certainly been England's most successful coach will go out with an Ashes whitewash and a botched World Cup campaign ringing in his ears and that his achievements will be tempered by the steep fall from grace in the last 18 months of his reign.

He first took on the job in 1999, in a decade during which the England team had plunged from one disaster to the next. There might have been no shortage of talent, but, hampered by a selection policy which would have disgraced a paranoid schizophrenic, they lurched from one failure to the next. Fletcher showed just what might have been, winning a home series against a still capable West Indies side and then guiding them to double success on the subcontinent, with series wins in both Pakistan and Sri Lanka - arguably one of his greatest and most underrated achievements.

Central contracts were introduced in 2000, bringing to an end the madcap situation whereby England players were accountable to both club and country. The policy may have its critics, not least from those in the county game, but one need only take a look at the way English rugby is being torn apart by the club vs. country row to see that it was the right way to go.

With Nasser Hussain, appointed to the England captaincy at the same time as Fletcher was given the job of coach, he formed a strong bond which suited both men. Hussain's forthright nature allowed him to take control of the team, while allowing Fletcher to take his preferred back-stage role. Darren Gough, long England's lone strike bowler, was finally given a worthy partner in Andy Caddick, with whom he formed England's best opening bowling partnership since Willis and Botham.

Fletcher may have copped flak in later years for his sometimes misplaced loyalty to players, but he showed himself in his early years to be no mean judge of talent. Without him, we might never have had Michael Vaughan or Marcus Tresocthick, both with mediocre county records, but in whom Fletcher rightly saw the talent and temperament to succeed at the highest level. Of course not all his punts were successful; amongst the less good calls on the South Africa tour of 1999-00, were Chris Adams, Gavin Hamilton and Graeme Swann, none of whom made an impression on the international game.

From that base of players who he had inherited, he built a new team, a core of then young fast bowlers such as Hoggard, Harmison and Jones backed up by an experienced batting core of Butcher, Hussain and Thorpe. That was, in effect, the basis of the side which stormed the Caribbean in early 2004, the starting point for a golden period. That was under the leadership of a new captain, Michael Vaughan, another with whom Fletcher was compatible. The main batsmen in that side had been replaced a year later, when the 2005 Ashes came around, yet England still triumphed. Hussain had by then retired, and Butcher was injured, but it was the decision to drop Thorpe in favour of Kevin Pietersen was a gutsy one. At the time, many felt it was wrong (including myself), he was, after all, dropping the man who had been England's foremost batsmen for a decade, in favour of someone who was at that time little more than a glorified slogger. Even on the first day of that momentous series, as Pietersen defied a hopeless situation and took the attack to Australia, Fletcher was vindicated. Perhaps now, he will look back with a half-smile at how one decision could have been so fruitful, while the equivalent ones he took a year later were so awry.

Of course, despite continued success at Test level, there were always question marks over England's ODI team. During Fletcher's eight year reign, there have been perhaps three batsmen who could be relied on in the shorter form. At one point two of them, Knight and Trescothick, opened the batting, while Pietersen only emerged in early 2005. Otherwise, England's batting in limited-overs cricket has been fairly dismal. Players such as Hussain, Stewart, Vaughan, all excellent Test batsmen, were incapable of expanding their games to suit the shorter format. Add to that the traditional inability of English batsmen to play good spin bowling, and you have a recipe for disaster. Yet as much as the players are largely responsible, one has to wonder how Fletcher, so revered as a batting coach, was unable to help them focus their games more productively. Furthermore, on the selection front, he was as patchy in ODI teams as he was consistent for Tests. Not only did he fail to identify talented county players suited to the one-day game, he would chop and change, somehow always ending up back with the same collection of failures, such as Solanki, Blackwell, Clarke and Kabir Ali.

Briefly, during the summer of 2005, the one-day side way successful, matching Australia. However, this was practically a mirror of the Test team, boosted by the presence of two proficient one-day players, Trescothick and Pietersen and Flintoff in the form of his life. A year later, it had descended into chaos. Everyone who was nobody was given a go: think Chapple, Bresnan, Loudon and Yardy. Even a month before the World Cup, untried players were being given their first go.

There was also Fletcher's attitude to the county game, at best apathetic, at worst, disdainful. Although central contracts have been an undoubted positive, there is an extent to which they have gone too far. While one does not want to see someone like Flintoff or Harmison bowled into the ground, they do, however, still need to bowl; it is not good enough to simply turn up on the day an expect them to produce the goods, a lesson which Harmison's displays in the recent Ashes will hopefully have driven home.

There will be a time in the near future for reviews and recriminations, and for blame to be apportioned and shouldered. But right now, followers of the England cricket team should pause for a minute to salute a man who has been of immeasurable value to them over a long period and who has transformed a team in the doldrums to one capable of, however briefly, defeating champions. He leaves with England in a state of disarray, but with a structure he has helped impose which should stand it in good stead for the future. As the announcement of his resignation was made today in his absence, he departs much as he arrived, in relative anonymity. Still, his impact on English cricket has been significant, and will linger on, even if the man himself will not.