The Plan

The inside story of the England cricket team's quest to become the number one Test nation in the world.
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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 are in touching distance of top spot. 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.
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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.
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And in examining Fletcher and Flower's background in Zimbabwe, where James himself played, he uncovers the continental shift behind the turnaround. With players such as Andrew Strauss, Matt Prior, Kevin Pietersen and Jonathan Trott to the fore, this 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 correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph. He read Classics at Swansea University before becoming a postgraduate at Cambridge, where he won a Blue and opened the batting with 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 the next year. 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.