Odd man in

Four days after our interview I lay awake trying to puzzle out the mystery of one of the strangest men I have ever come across, certainly in cricket. How on earth can one explain Duncan Fletcher?

And then it hit me. The key to his character was in the last place one usually looks to understand a cricketer: his ghosted autobiography. It is a seemingly innocuous passage on page 133 of Behind the Shades, going back to his days captaining Zimbabwe.

"Being an allrounder, I was worried that I might not be able to spend as much time on my game as I wanted, so I asked for a coach to be appointed above me.

"So in came Peter Carlstein, the former Rhodesian batsman who had played eight Tests for South Africa, but within five or six net sessions I realised there was a serious problem, because nobody knew who was really in charge. In no sport can the player have two bosses ..."

His interpretation, according to the book, was simple: "The captain is always the boss, the managing director." That is not precisely how I interpret it. Let us phrase it slightly differently: Duncan likes to be the boss, whatever the situation.

Once given that control, he can be a highly effective, indeed exceptional, leader. Inside the England camp, surrounded by subordinates, he was able to pretend he was not in control at all. It allowed him to work effectively with his captains (all bar one, anyway), to let his players express themselves, to give way to colleagues' opinions and to acquire his reputation for self effacement.

But his dealings with those he could not ultimately command, those who did not necessarily accept Fletcher's own valuation of himself, were always fraught and, as we now know, left him very bitter. Hence this ill-tempered, ill-judged book, a work whose tone was accurately conveyed by the newspaper serialisation.

It was a week when the effects of the serialisation were still reverberating. Fletcher had just been called "paranoid" by Mike Atherton and "pathetic" by Angus Fraser; and they were among the kinder judges. We were due to meet in a hotel coffee shop at 10.30 for a 50-minute interview. I arrived 15 minutes early but was immediately hustled in as if I were late.

There was no by-your-leave. I did not expect to be given the benefit of the extra time and so was not disappointed. The pleasantries were perfunctory and there was no suggestion of coffee (he refused on my behalf). It was exactly like his England press conferences.

Six months out of the job, Fletcher was dressed as if for a round of golf: he looked fitter, slimmer, far less jowly than the Rod Steiger figure depicted on the book's dust jacket. I remarked that the photo did not do him justice. He did not smile.

And yet he is not an evasive interviewee. He answers questions, again as he did in his press conferences. But there is something not right: it has puzzled me for years. It is partly the refusal to make eye contact.

But mainly it is the tone. He addresses people like a disillusioned schoolteacher restating the bleeding obvious to a recalcitrant class for the umpteenth time. One imagines that is how he talked to Boycott, Botham, Blofeld, Graveney, Marsh, Tim Lamb, Barry Jarman and all the others on whom he avenges himself in the book.

We talked a bit about the role of coaches, who seem to me to be overblamed and overpraised. He agreed with that. "There are a lot of attributes. You have to understand the biomechanics, how the body works, because you can only move in a certain way and each person is slightly different. And you have to understand the mental aspects."

But international teams can get by without coaching? "It just adds a little bit of everything," he replied. "Fifty or 60 years ago there were no consultants in business. It's exactly the same in cricket. The game's gone forward."

It is unquantifiable, though, isn't it? "It's very hard to explain. During the dips you have a bigger role. If the players go off at a tangent, you have to get them back where you want them to be." The captain is the boss, though, and you are the consultant? Here he touched on the Carlstein story. "That's how I see the job, wherever I've been. The captain is still in charge. That's unique to cricket. He's the one in the heat of battle. I think it's crucial that the captain is boss of the side."

But surely you insisted on being in charge? The captain has far less power now, doesn't he?

He wavered here. "The final say was between me and the captain. That's why it's so important that the relationship was so good."

But you wanted to be the boss and got very prickly if you were not recognised as such? There is an incident in the book when Jarman, as a match referee, gets up Fletcher's nose by refusing to recognise his authority and insisting on speaking to Phil Neale, who had the title of manager.

"I think on the administrative side the coach has the final say." I said that on past England tours what he calls "old-fashioned managers" had far less power than he had. "The captain is in charge. I keep saying," he replies. Then he looks at his watch, not for the last time.

We move on to his father, whom he describes in the book as "a pillar of authority, decency and common sense". Is that what you strive to be? "I hope I'm someone like that. He didn't impose himself on things and shrunk from the limelight." Do you have a sense of humour? "Yes, if I get to know someone and trust them. A sense of fun has been part of every team I've been involved with." They say you enjoy practical jokes, I remarked. "I enjoy practical jokes."

Yet there was the incident when he was with Glamorgan when Robert Croft snipped Fletcher's socks. He did not think that was funny and gets very pompous about it in the book. "Ach, cutting people's socks and ties. That's a person's clothing. You don't do things like that. You just don't. There are practical jokes and practical jokes."

So you have got a sense of humour? "You can speak to other people." He smiled now, for the first and only time. "The people you play with, you're going to war with them. Humour's very important." Did you learn that in the Rhodesian army? "Nah. When you go to play international sport, it's a battle." This is odd. Ex-soldiers are normally cautious about applying military metaphors to more trivial matters.

There is another striking passage in the book, understandably overlooked in the furore, about how he had bombed out a Glamorgan fringe player called Phil North, who had been out late, upset his roomie and then turned up at the ground late too. "I was never afraid to make tough decisions like that," he adds, throwing in the expulsion of players called Cecil Grimmer, whom he actually sent off the field in a club match, and Grant Paterson, who made faces behind Fletcher's back.

You did not take the tough decision when Andrew Flintoff turned up drunk in Australia? "There was more than one decision to make. One decision was: 'Yes, he'd done wrong.' But the other was that it would have affected the performance of the cricket team. My feeling at the end of the day was that going public would have disrupted a side under fire. Not bringing it out into the open might have helped them win that trophy."

You can make tough decisions for North, Grimmer and Paterson, but not for Flintoff? "It's a totally different situation, because that's not upsetting the side." So why reveal it now? "I felt let down."

It is hard on cricketers, isn't it? We agreed that there were far too many games. No one can spend a long career playing in every single England game, can one? "No, but you can't pick and choose. You're part of a team. All for one and one for all. It's got worse the last two or three years and you have to start to look at that. But you can't say, 'I'll go there, I won't go there.'"

So who decides when players should take a rest? "You'd discuss it with the sports psychiatrist and you'd speak to the trainer. Then you'd make a decision. At the end of the day you're in charge and you're accountable." So the coach is in charge? "At the end of the day it's the coach's decision."

Ah!

It was 10.55 and Fletcher's PR man was looking at his watch too. Early in, early out. Do you feel better now you have written the book? "I feel better for putting my side of the story." He was fidgeting with his mobile now.

"I was just trying to put my version of events. When you write a book, it's very hard to know how it's going to be interpreted. People may think I'm being personal, but I'm not. I could have been more guarded, but then that would have been misinterpreted too. People would have said I was glossing things over."

Do you feel better now? "I feel better for putting my side of the story."

I said I got the feeling that if anyone was not in Fletcher's team, and directly under his control, or did not provide exactly what Fletcher wanted, he resented them, people like Lamb and Graveney.

"That's my point. These people didn't protect me." Do you think you have enhanced your reputation? "I was just putting my side of the story."

It was 11.05 and the PR man was edging forward now. I got the message. After I grasped the significance of Carlstein, it also occurred to me that Fletcher's weirdness - and that is the word - must have something to do with his background.

Here is a man who can operate brilliantly when placed at the top of a hierarchy, but is almost wholly dysfunctional in routine human dealings. The Wisden Cricketer had been invited by him to help plug his book, yet he was incapable of adding the tiniest dusting of charm or even good manners to the occasion to assist the process.

I wondered whether this might have something to do with being brought up in Rhodesia, a society that was both hierarchical and dysfunctional. Sorting that out would require many more sessions with Fletcher, possibly with Mike Brearley in attendance. I think all concerned would choose to pass on that.

"How many more interviews have you got today?" I asked the PR man lightly. "Plenty," he smiled. "Cheers now," said Duncan. That was not a pleasantry, it was a dismissal. He was still not smiling.