Duncan comes to the party

Duncan Fletcher: Behind the Shades, The Autobiography with Steve James
(Simon & Schuster, 378pp) £18.99

We've observed him from afar, sat through cliché-riddled press conferences and become infuriated at his brooding demeanour. Would the real Duncan Fletcher please stand up?

At last, in his autobiography, Behind the Shades, he has - and how. The week preceding the book's publication caused an understandable media furore, with revelations of Andrew Flintoff's drinking and of the back-room decisions Fletcher was forced to make. Equally predictably, though less understandably, Fletcher was made a scapegoat for revealing these brilliantly juicy insights.

Anyone who has read the anodyne (and often premature) autobiographies of sporting figures which litter the shelves won't mind one little bit. Behind the Shades may be slightly ill timed - no cautious forward press, here - but dull it is not.

Fletcher is a man who places great emphasis on trust and loyalty, and it comes as no surprise that Steve James, his former comrade at Glamorgan and friend of many years, helped write it. Broken up into 13 chapters, the book spans his life from childhood right up to the World Cup, when he resigned.

He begins with a fascinating background to his happy childhood in Zimbabwe, growing up on a farm with a protective (and revealingly, loyal) family. His five siblings - four boys and Ann - were, we are told, far more talented at sport than the young Duncan. This rivalry instilled his determination and sharpened his mental focus on his one sport, cricket.

It's the later chapters, involving his time with Glamorgan, and then as England coach, that contain the most salacious insights. His difficulties with David Graveney; his surprise when offered the England coaching job; his spat with Henry Blofeld (surprising), and the "mutual dislike" of Geoffrey Boycott (less surprising). And, of course, the Flintoff saga in Chapter 13 which is rather dramatically entitled "The Winter from Hell".

But something jars. The book lives up to its title - we are certainly given an insight into a previously mysterious man - but it has an underlying seam of bitterness and resentment which, for someone who has achieved so much, is a disappointment and a little sad. Chapters are sprinkled with insistences that the reader "must understand"; that the media twisted his words and cheated the truth; that he is right and everyone else is wrong. If he never cared about the media during his tenure, why bother now?

But this is Fletcher, after all. Dogged, determined and stubborn as a mule. Forthright views are no less than we expect. He and James should be lauded for producing a book that remains interesting from cover to cover while never dodging sensitive issues from the past.