Beware the man who observes vigilantly and yet resolves steadfastly not to speak his mind. Even as Duncan Fletcher, he of the sunken jowls, continues to glower on Team India’s dressing room balcony with his lips pursed, lurking behind his inscrutable shades lie a thousand tales that might never be told. It is not always that silence is the virtue of fools. And it would not be an exaggeration to state that the duration of this 62-year-old Zimbabwean’s stint as coach depends more on what he avoids doing than what he does.
Where there exists appreciation not for constructive criticism but the conscious avoidance of confrontation under all circumstances, there will always exist arguments for a man in semi-retirement to be sought out as the replacement for the ultra-successful Gary Kirsten. The Silver Fox himself being the coaching template from which his predecessor sprang, his appointment for a two-year contract was rationalised as a non-intrusive option. Nonetheless, commencing as he did with the titles of numero uno Test nation and World Cup champion prefixed to India’s credentials, slippage was unavoidably pre-destined. And Duncan Fletcher finds himself in zero-tolerance zone. Only the naive would have predicted otherwise.
Three and a half years from the time when Guru Gary commenced his innings in March 2008, the sticking plaster has finally snapped, and the depth of the wound has revealed itself in all its ugliness: the ageing batting line-up is no longer the force of yore; the bowling firepower is ridden by injury and dearth of emerging talent; quality eludes the next generation of cricketers; and the BCCI, further convinced that it can do no wrong, has mastered the art of making a mockery of scheduling.
While such concerns undoubtedly existed during Gary Kirsten’s tenure, the problems were never acute enough to compel the South African, more so once his exit plan was in place, to suggest a transition process to his knowledgeable employers. That uncomfortable task is unambiguously the burden of Duncan Fletcher. It is no longer the requirement of the script that the coach cast himself as a peripheral figure — a strategy whose success for Gary Kirsten was substantially – if not entirely – based on non-interference being the perfect lubricant for a team driven by a near-perfect alignment of youth and experience, form and fitness, being in auto-control mode.
And therein lies Duncan Fletcher’s dilemma. While the current situation demands that he be elevated to a position of greater authority, he owes his appointment not so much to his less-storied other skills as his willingness to follow the Gary Kirsten way. Ergo, his sudden transformation into a proactive personality seeking to impose his will on a system not known to be receptive to change is unlikely to find favour with either star players or arrogant administrators. The danger of assuming a new avatar is clear-cut: any coach seeking to alter the status quo, that is any coach seeking to do a Greg Chappell, will find himself unemployed sooner rather than later. And yet, in these hard times, Indian cricket can continue to indulge in the ego-pampering games its big bosses play only at its own peril. Forcing the ‘outsider’ looking in to play silent observer might have been par for the course during Gary Kirsten’s tenure but much has changed since then. Duncan Fletcher must be allowed to reinvent himself.