Coach Duncan Fletcher gets ready to check out

SYDNEY: "Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer," Muhammad Ali once said. One wonders what Duncan Fletcher, all of 66, has to say about that.
Sydney will in all probability mark his last Test as India coach. He will go as he arrived, in silence. If cricket-crazy India doesn't remember him, it's unlikely Fletcher will care. If he does, we will never know.
A day before the Sydney Test, Fletcher stood impassively as the team members played football in the morning. He shifted uneasily once in a while, maybe impatient to get them to the nets. That is the way it has always been.
Throughout this series, Fletcher has been a constant feature at nets, but it is seldom that he has interfered in the proceedings. Like Father Time, he has watched. Once in a while, he will have a quiet chat with a player, mostly a youngster, away from prying eyes.
Fletcher has withstood scathing attacks on his reputation, a sharp dip in India's Test fortunes and the arrival of a team director in Ravi Shastri. After the World Cup, he will get to go out on his own terms. He must have done some good. It's unlikely we'll know.
Indian cricket often works in mysterious ways but it took a foreigner to teach them the fine art of self-censorship. Silence can guard against personal attack. It can also stonewall praise when it is due.
Only those in the team and the immediate vicinity will know how useful Fletcher was in MS Dhoni's set up.
Fletcher hasn't been totally out of character in his public dealings while in India. In England, too, he was known to be laconic with the media.
If he has been different, it has been in his methods. He came across as too hands-off, never watching domestic games, never pushing for youth like he did his previous stint. Maybe his hands were tied.
We wouldn't know.
What is clear is that India's Test for tunes, especially away from home, took a sharp dip under Fletcher. The team won only two Tests out of 23 away. He oversaw a difficult era of transition, and maybe was powerless to stem the tide.
What emerges from talking with players is that Fletcher is very good with the technical side of things, especially with youngsters. Why then, wasn't he hired as just a batting coach? Virat Kohli was asked on Tuesday what he thought of Fletcher's stint.
Like other players before him, he praised Fletcher's inputs without specifying.
"He has done a very good job with the young players in the team. The players who played in the past, the senior players, wouldn't require as much help but with youngsters he has been really good with the technical part of the game. I have personally enjoyed playing under him as coach."
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