The Plan ― How Fletcher and Flower Transformed English Cricket

In 1999, England slumped to a new low in their long and tumultuous cricket history. Defeat in a home series at the hands of a mediocre New Zealand team saw them fall to the bottom of the world Test rankings, below even Zimbabwe. Yet only just over a decade later, England had reached the top. It has been a remarkable and profound transformation, brought about largely by two men with an insatiable desire to succeed, Duncan Fletcher and Andy Flower. Here Steve James tells the story of the renaissance of English cricket from a unique perspective. As the former batting partner of ECB managing director Hugh Morris, a player under Fletcher at Glamorgan and Flower's closest confidant in the press corps, James is able to both relate and analyze the reasons behind the rise. From crucial choices of captain to innovative coaching and a complete overhaul of training and preparation for matches, it is the tale of a refusal to be second best. And in examining Fletcher and Flower's background in Zimbabwe, where James himself played, he uncovers the continental shift behind the turnaround. It is the story of how English steel has been melded with African fire to create the most potent combination in world cricket.

Steve James is cricket columnist for the Sunday Telegraph and a sports writer for the Daily Telegraph. As a postgraduate at Cambridge, he won a Blue in the side captained by Mike Atherton. He played his county cricket with Glamorgan for 18 years, scoring nearly 16,000 runs at an average of over 40, and captaining them for three seasons, winning a National League trophy in 2002, before retiring due to injury. In 1997 James helped Glamorgan to win the County Championship for the first time in nearly 30 years and was named the Professional Cricketers Association Player of the Year. He still holds the record for highest score by a Glamorgan batsman (309 not out against Sussex at Colwyn Bay in 2000) and also won two caps for England.