Fletcher must go, says Wisden

14 April 2012

Wisden, the self-important but still massively influential cricketing "bible" out on Wednesday, calls for the end to Duncan Fletcher's eight-year reign as England coach.

The 144th edition says the first five years of Fletcher's reign "represented English cricket's most sustained period of success since the 1950s".

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Past his best: Wisden says Fletcher's bubble has burst

Editor Matthew Engel writes: "England played some vibrant, thrilling cricket. Fletcher's professionalism, his seeming omniscience and his sense of certainty played a major role in making this happen."

Yet Engel believes "the England bubble", the self-contained state in which Fletcher protects his players and helped create the conditions for success, burst during this winter's Ashes campaign.

"There are problems living inside a bubble," writes Engel. "Eventually the oxygen runs out. Accurate information rarely seeped out; it also stopped seeping in. Even experts have to keep listening and learning. Fletcher, on the evidence of the 2006-07 Ashes, just stopped."

His conclusion is that Fletcher must go irrespective of what happens in the World Cup and it is an opinion that will be noted by the hierarchy and the Ken Schofield committee reviewing the state of England's cricket.

Engel does not say who should come next. Academy coach Peter Moores will almost certainly succeed Fletcher at some point while Essex batsman Andy Flower is widely regarded as the "coming man" of coaching but surely this summer would be too soon for either to step up.

The annual naming of five Cricketers of the Year is not as significant as once it was.

Still, Mark Ramprakash's inclusion is recognition of a brilliant county career — he scored 2,278 first-class runs for Surrey in 2006 — that will contain the epitaph "if only" at international level while Paul Collingwood, Monty Panesar, Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene and Pakistan batsman Mohammad Yousuf are worthy winners.

More important is the "Leading Cricketer in the World" award, which for 2006 goes to Muttiah Muralitharan.

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