Duncan’s Dossiers: No.908 – England
November 26th, 2009 by Alan Tyers in Alan Tyers, EnglandTo: SA coach Mickey Arthur
From: Fletcher, Duncan
RE: England tactics
Mickey – Some thoughts on England as requested.
I should accidentally leak this under the opponent’s dressing room door, ideally with HOPELESS ENGLAND written on it. I’ll get young Geraint Jones to run off a few copies and scatter them around the place.
Fortunately, they’ve done you a massive favour by leaving out their most destructive bowler. Why Ashley Giles is at home in Edgbaston designing his range of signature spice racks, repotting his marrows and getting involved with the local historical battle re-enactment society when he could be out there ripping through a Test line-up with 1-35, chipping in with a tidy 20 down the order and being the first name on the teamsheet in the 19th hole, I simply do not understand.
I notice that Monty Panesar is in the country though. It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to see that I was proved completely right and he is in fact totally useless. The ideal scenario would be for Swann – who I like, multi-dimensional cricketer, can chip in with a wicket at No.8, has good control of what sunglasses to wear – to get injured.
I would consider getting Flintoff over on some sort of covert operation – I understand Chubby Chandler is trying to get him a few gigs off the park? And let’s face it, Darren Gough’s got the podgy former fast bowler media personality ticket gripped more tightly than Boycott holding his wallet at my leaving whipround, no offence to any of those individuals obviously.
I have a tactic even more effective than the forward press: get Flintoff to take Swann out and make him drink his own bodyweight in Amaretto, hopefully incapacitate Swann.
During my time as England coach Flintoff never played a single match without being wired up to a drip in the dressing room containing Blue WKD, pork scratchings and liquidised Benson & Hedges. He would frequently turn up to practice with Keith Richards in tow, smoking a cheroot, dressed as Princess Leia and drinking from a portable bath full of tequila. I managed to hush it all up at the time for the good of the team but I have decided to finally break my silence in my next autobiography, so better keep this under your sunhat for the time being.
As leaked to Alan Tyers
Posted in Alan Tyers, England | 3 Comments »
November 29th, 2009 at 12:03 am
Not sure whether I liked Princess Leia Flintoff or sneaky Geraint Jones best. Lovely stuff
November 29th, 2009 at 12:08 am
[...] From one of my favourite bloggers comes this [...]
November 30th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Not sure what help Fletcher can give to South Africa, can’t see his insight into the England team being a massive influence, probably more of a psychological stunt.
Tell me what don’t South Africa know about Andrew Strauss by now that Fletcher could tell them?
Of all the England players he’s worked with and knows, they have been in the side that long now that all their strengths and weaknesses are fairly well known around the cricketing World.
Of the unknown quantities like Onions, Morgan, Swann, Rashid, Bresnan etc who South Africa don’t really know much about, does Fletcher know any more about them?
I’d say at a guess Jeremy Snape has more recent experience of most of these players than Fletcher has.