By CricketCountry Staff
Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly feels coach Duncan Fletcher is under tremendous pressure after five consecutive losses away from home in Test cricket.
Published: Dec 31, 2011, 03:18 PM (IST)
Edited: Dec 31, 2011, 03:18 PM (IST)
India have lost all their overseas Test matches with Duncan Fletcher as a coach © Getty Images
By CricketCountry Staff
Melbourne: Dec 31, 2011
Former Indian captain Sourav Ganguly feels coach Duncan Fletcher is under tremendous pressure after five consecutive losses away from home in Test cricket.
Ganguly was quoted in thatscricket.com as saying, “He has had a tough time. It’s his fifth loss in his past five overseas Tests, so he will be under a bit of pressure. He has to turn it around.”
For all the praise and admiration the Zimbabwean gets in the cricketing world for his technical wisdom, his record in Australia is as abysmal as it gets.
Fletcher, while he was coach of England and now India, has lost 10 of the 11 Tests he has been involved in Australia.
In 2002-03, when Fletcher brought over an England team to Australia, his team was drubbed 4-1. The 2005 visit Down Under was worse as the hosts wiped the floor clean with an English side by a 5-0 margin.
Fletcher’s overseas record with India is similarly dismal. He began in West Indies where India won 1-0 but lost countless admirers for refusing to chase down 85 runs off 15 overs for victory, with seven wickets in hand, to win the final Test in Dominica.
The painful memories of England are too vivid when India were humiliated 4-0 by the hosts this summer and the one-day series was no better where another clean sweep was awaiting the tourists.
The loss in Melbourne makes it five successive losses for India in last five Tests and there isn’t any sign that batsmen are any better at facing the swing deliveries than they were in England.
