For even the most fervent cricket supporter, England's World Cup campaign was as bad as one could imagine with below-par performances throughout and an inability to turn dominant positions into match winning ones.
Michael Vaughan has taken much of the flak being fired and rightly so - a player of his undoubted class simply has to score more runs at the top of the innings and the frustration felt by all England fans is only amplified when you witness the kind of innings he is capable of playing such as that demonstrated against the West Indies this weekend.
The last Super 8's game saw the end of an era for two people who have had a massive influence on the international game - Brian Lara and Duncan Fletcher. Lara had two real rivals for the title of the world's greatest current batsman in Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting. If you took a poll of who is the best batsman in the world now, Ponting would win hands down. But before the brilliant Tasmanian became the complete player he is today, cricket enthusiasts everywhere would argue over whether Lara or Tendulkar was the best. It's always difficult to judge great players against each other but for my money, because of his ability to produce his best when his side needed it most, Lara gets the nod.
His 153 not out chasing 311 against an Australian attack including Warne and McGrath on a last day pitch in Barbados in 1999 is widely regarded as Lara's greatest innings though his penchant for even bigger scores early in his career really elevated him to superstar status. His 501 not out against Durham at Edgbaston in 1994 remains the highest first class score in history and was one of countless games where bowlers found that no matter where they bowled, their efforts were doomed to failure against a truly irresistible force. A cricket world without Brain Lara will indeed be a poorer place.
The complete opposite of Brian Lara's natural showmanship was the calm calculation of Duncan Fletcher. When he first took over coaching the England team, they were ranked bottom of the ICC Test table and there was a widely held belief, not least amongst English cricket itself, that English cricketers simply didn't have the skill, determination, will to win or pride shown by their international counterparts.
Fletcher, along with his first captain Nasser Hussain, changed all that, pulling England up by the bootstraps from the depths of despair and forging them into a genuinely competitive unit, particularly at test level. The Ashes victory in 2005 will be seen as Fletcher's greatest achievement and rightly so - the Australians were widely regarded as unbeatable, especially to themselves, yet the coach's meticulous field settings rendered batsmen like Hayden and Gilchrist impotent for most of the series and shattered the myth of Australian invincibility.
Before that memorable Ashes triumph though, England had achieved some fantastic successes. The winter of 2000 saw test series wins in Pakistan and Sri Lanka and in 2003/4, a 3-0 victory in the West Indies followed by a summer whitewash of New Zealand and West Indies again. Perhaps the most significant of England's away performances was the 2-1 series win in South Africa, a victory that gave the team the belief that they really could challenge the Australians in the English summer.
Fletcher's coaching philosophy revolved around attention to detail, planning, technical improvement and most importantly, loyalty to his players. In his book detailing how he approached the 2005 Ashes series, Fletcher says 'I have always believed that players will come right in the end if you persevere with them, so long as your selection is right in the first place.'
Marcus Trescothick, Andrew Flintoff, Matthew Hoggard, Paul Nixon, Ian Bell are but a few of the players who have benefited from this approach but the player who stands out as a 'Fletcher' pick who came right is Paul Collingwood. Derided as a 'clubbie' when he first arrived on the scene, Collingwood has now become an integral part of England's middle order, a useful change bowler and one of the best fielders in the world and Fletcher must take enormous credit for that and his foremost requirement when selecting a player - character.
The loyalty shown by Duncan Fletcher to his players proved ultimately to be his undoing, starting with the winter's Ashes series. Geraint Jones returned to the team and had a nightmare 3 matches with the bat and gloves whilst the picking of Ashley Giles over Monty Panesar sowed the seeds of disquiet amongst England supporters themselves. The World Cup debacle with Vaughan opening and the continued selection of Sajid Mahmood when all common sense dictated another approach sealed Fletcher's fate.
As always in sport, the coach's departure is rarely a happy ending and there will be more than a touch of regret amongst the England players in whom Fletcher invested so much time. A new direction for the England team is needed and hopefully the excellent Peter Moores can provide it. There is much still right with the team and it's certainly not all doom and gloom. For that, English supporters have much to thank Duncan Fletcher for.
Wello
