Book description
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.
In The Plan, 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 analyse 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.
He read Classics at Swansea University before becoming a
postgraduate at Cambridge, where he won a Blue in the side captained
by Mike Atherton. He played his county cricket with Glamorgan for
eighteen 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 thirty 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.
