)
James Anderson ran in, the red Duke ball gleaming on the outside, the seam slightly tilted towards the left. Virat Kohli tapped his bat on the hard Old Trafford turf. The rest of the sequence - and the outcome - left the oddmakers at Ladbrokes and William Hill chuckling. As it has every time Kohli has batted in the last four weeks of the Indian cricket team's tour of England. On this particular occasion, the ball ended in Ian Bell's hands in the slip cordon. As the bowler flashed a wry smile, Kohli was officially inducted into Anderson's bunny club.
Amidst that chaos, very few people noticed Kohli's front foot trigger movement - the left foot was correctly planted across for a fraction of a second before it quickly pointed itself towards the bowler, thus leaving him open-chested and forcing his bat to poke hard at the away-going ball. Old habits die hard. Yet, there was a hint of coach Duncan Fletcher's inputs in that movement. But it was too little to protect against the dismissal, and too late for Kohli's rehabilitation in this series.
In Delhi, Raj Kumar Sharma frantically pushed his visa papers at the UK embassy to catch an early flight. A desperate Kohli felt he needed his childhood coach by his side to help him out of his mess. Shred to tatters in social media forums over his string of low scores, with not-too-subtle references to the presence of actress Anushka Sharma, his alleged friend, in England, Kohli had been trying hard to remedy the situation. And he needed help. From Sharma, not the Indian team coach.
So what is Fletcher doing with Team India? It's a question that has cropped up for the umpteenth time through India's recent overseas trauma and since his arrival in 2011. Every answer involves a reassurance from captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni and a convoluted description of Fletcher's work ethics. Why then is Fletcher's work not visible to the naked eye, not reflecting in Team India's batting card?
It's a pity that Fletcher cannot answer those questions himself; he had himself inserted a clause in his contract to keep him at arm's length from the media. Too many guns have been trained at him, and every past cricketer and coach has taken potshots at this grumpy-looking senior citizen in the dressing room, now a multi-millionaire, because of his Indian contract.
But the more interesting question at this point is, why are the players so much in love with Fletcher? In a team where coaches have been fired at the slightest discord and made scapegoats to hide the failures of star players, Fletcher has seen through his original two-year term and got two one-year extensions running up to April 2015.
Clearly, there's something about Fletcher, something that forced Gary Kirsten to insist on Fletcher as his successor. The Zimbabwean has an impressive CV. Few know that Fletcher's imprint in his country goes beyond the match-winning 69 and four wickets that shocked Australia in the 1983 World Cup. He also created a system of affixing alpha-numeric licence plates on vehicles to identify culprits of hit-and-run cases as well as a simple mediclaim procedure.
Clearly, Fletcher is a man for solutions. His sharp brain helped South Africa's Western Province and England county Glamorgan before his famous stint as England's coach. Fletcher got an English team of ageing players and led them to a famous Ashes win in 2005, and eventually to the top of Test rankings. Many don't know that Fletcher had decided to give up on his cricket coaching and intended to ply his trade in rugby - a game which is closest to his heart - before the India offer came.
In contrast to England, Team India was already on the top in ODIs and Test cricket when Fletcher arrived. But the senior players were exiting. Perhaps this explains why Fletcher's record with India has been marginal. Still, Fletcher always had solutions for the young team and, in his own words, is enjoying this tenure much more than any of his stints.
Fletcher is a hands-on person in his own way, though he never sweats it out or plays football like Kirsten did. He prefers to work one-on-one, man-to-man, at the nets. On the drawing board, he sorts out technical aspects. Fletcher is regarded as someone who can read match situations better than any individual. Ishant Sharma's famous short-ball theory that Dhoni employed to win at Lord's was, in fact, drilled into the Indian captain by none other than Fletcher, who quickly saw that the English lot would be susceptible to the bouncing ball.
In Kohli's case, the problem had been identified even before the English tour started and work was on to help him deal with the swing. Fletcher had long conversation with Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara at the nets and worked extensively on Kohli getting his front foot across to be in a better position to play swing, while leaving as many deliveries as possible outside off.
But it's easier said than done. One of the reasons why Fletcher is so popular with players and his results so invisible to the fans is that he doesn't change the basics of the player. He prefers to fine-tune their techniques, subject to the player agreeing and feeling comfortable with it. So the onus is on the players.
A Team India player, currently on tour, reveals that contrary to common perception, Fletcher does indeed have solutions and strategies, but the players are unable to implement them to perfection. "Fletcher has been very patient with us, he has worked out our flaws and how to deal with them, and helped us to gradually overcome them," says the batsman. "It's not easy to change your technique overnight, but Fletcher has a lot of faith in us."
The player adds that though India has a new team, it is better equipped to fight overseas. "We are not afraid of the short ball anymore," he says. "No batsman has done well on his first tours to South Africa, England, Australia, but we have done better than most." It helps that Fletcher adapts well to local conditions. As Shikhar Dhawan testifies, "The coach has become very much an Indian. He has picked up Hindi words, listens to Hindi songs and really understands our style of cricket."
Fletcher might have understood the Indian style and system of cricket, but he's yet to gauge the emotional bonding of the fans with the team and why losing is always never an option. His strategies might bear results in the long run - remember his results with England came in eight years - but there's no instant magic when it comes to a team in transition.
Fletcher may indeed have been late in helping Kohli or the other batsmen on the current tour. But in terms of Indian cricket, it's better late than never. The grand old man of Team India may not be there to see the men he coached - Dhawan, Murali Vijay, Kohli, Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane - become the next Fab Five. A pity, since he will probably have to live with the tag of having achieved only marginal success.
