Rob Houwing

As much as Cricket South Africa’s appointment of Duncan Fletcher to aid the Proteas at key times over the next year or so is to be deeply lauded, national coach Mickey Arthur deserves bouquets of his own, I believe, for giving it the tick of approval.

After all, he needn’t have: Arthur has established himself as a quality international mentor in his own right - silencing a few doubters all the while - and the engagement of one particularly high-profile former national coach to work with an incumbent one is not an automatic marriage made in heaven, is it?

So there is little doubt in my own mind that Arthur has genuinely acted in the South African interest by permitting the ex-England coach, to a good degree, into the Proteas inner circle.

Certainly, there would be some instances in which more firebrand personalities might be expected to clash pretty quickly in such circumstances but Arthur, for one, is a thoroughly decent person for whom ego issues come some way down on his list of characteristics and priorities.

Fletcher, too, while an intriguingly more complex individual - this comes out in his autobiography, in which an arguably excessive distrust for an array of people is a recurring theme - is, at the end of the day, a salt-of-the-earth and utterly proven “cricket man” to the core.

There are no guarantees, but this occasional alliance may very well bear fruit as long as both men know very clearly, and also appreciate, what their specific and separate areas of jurisdiction are.

Significant and pleasing

Certainly the vast majority of Proteas players, I’m sure, will be chuffed to tap into Fletcher’s expertise. Some, like his old protégé Jacques Kallis, have already been making grateful use of his “freelance” expertise to mend a technical gremlin or two.

The timing is both significant and pleasing from a South African point of view: he will assist in the build-up to the Australian tour (including the first couple of weeks Down Under itself) and be involved again next summer when England visit these shores seeking revenge for their 2-1 home Test series reverse earlier this year.

Readers hardly need reminding that Fletcher has spent vast amounts of his time in recent years remoulding England into a force to be reckoned with, while an essential component of that quest has simultaneously been gnawing into Australian frailties as much as it was possible to do so during their enviable heyday.

In 2005, of course, that was an objective famously achieved as England wrested back the Ashes after eight successive series of heartbreaking drought. 

So he is truly a font of knowledge on both teams whom South Africa will strive to topple over the next 15 months or so.

He may well rather enjoy a period, too, in which Arthur will quite obviously still take the lion’s share of “public profile” rap: by the end of Fletcher’s England tenure (as the side fairly predictably subsided from their giddy 2005 peak, and I don’t believe any coach could have stopped it) he was “not getting on” with many in the remorseless British media and being perceived as a dour customer who needed to move on anyway.

Fine qualities

I had the pleasure - and it was that - of dealing with Fletcher during my Cape Argus cricket-writing tenure several years earlier when the glare, admittedly, was immeasurably less intense and “Fletch” had brought his brand of coaching magic to the UCT team at club level.

In that environment - and once he had come to trust me enough, I suppose - I came to appreciate, via his much-appreciated insights, the fine qualities of the man.

As much as he is a top-drawer coach in the classical sense (working especially fruitfully in dedicated one-on-one environments, by all accounts) he is big on mental aspects of the game … and yes, that includes “mental disintegration”.

I believe that is one area in which he may hugely benefit the Proteas’ bid to finally conquer demons and break their series duck Down Under.

It was a critical part of his Ashes masterminding three years back: he got his England troops to genuinely stand up to the Aussie bully-boys, as it were.

Not only that, but he personally managed to deviously rile Ricky Ponting on a couple of occasions during that summer – most famously after the Australian captain was run out by England’s controversial “substitute fielder” Gary Pratt and appeared to launch a tirade at Fletcher as he neared the Trent Bridge boundary on his disgruntled walk to the “hut”.

There is also an extract in Fletcher’s autobiography in which he speaks of Ponting’s anger after a minor contretemps at a captains-and-coaches meeting with the match referee: “(Ranjan) Madugalle stepped in and told us to settle down … I happened to look at Ponting. Those little eyes of his were staring darkly at me. He was fuming.”

Clearly, no love lost.

Who’s to say old adversary Fletcher’s reappearance with the Proteas will not irk Ponting - possibly to the point of unsettling rather than buoying him - all over again?

Welcome, Duncan; you will bring something different and potentially refreshing to the SA mix.

And once again: good on yer, Mickey …

Rob is Sport24's chief writer.

Disclaimer: Sport24 encourages freedom of speech and the expression of diverse views. The views of columnists published on Sport24 are therefore their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Sport24.