The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : ‘Politics! I just want to coach’

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Monday, Nov 05, 2007
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‘Politics! I just want to coach’

London: Former England cricket coach Duncan Fletcher has strongly denied having any malafide intension behind his latest disclosures of Andrew Flintoff’s drinking binges and saying that the all-rounder “let him down.”

Fletcher, who returned to Britain on Saturday, has also said in his yet to be released autobiography ‘Behind The Shades’ that former all-rounder Ian Botham was a bad influence on “Freddie” and alleged Geoff Boycott had a personal vendetta against him.

“Politics! I just want to coach,” Fletcher broke-off during the signing session of the book on the eve of its release.

“I see him (Flintoff) as a very, very good cricketer and he’s very important for England. I hope he gets over that foot injury,” he was quoted as saying by Sunday Telegraph.

Fletcher has revealed in the book that Flintoff, who was the England captain during the World Cup in the West Indies, was too drunk to fulfil a practice session the day before a one-day international against Australia.

Fletcher said his decision to disclose the story was determined by the ‘pedalo affair’ in St. Lucia during the World Cup, when Flintoff was caught drinking at 4 a.m. the day before England’s match against Canada.

“People have turned round and said, ‘should I have brought it up?’ From my point of view the two (incidents) were directly linked.

“You had a situation where an incident took place and rightly or wrongly I kept it in-house, then in three or four weeks’ time we had a similar affair. I just thought it was important it was brought out in the open.”

“If the ‘pedalo affair’ hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have revealed it (the story of England’s abandoned practice in Australia).

Having had a chat with him, if nothing had happened, I definitely wouldn’t have revealed it. But they were so directly linked I was taken aback by it: enough is enough sort of thing,” Fletcher said. — PTI

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