Keith William Robert Fletcher OBE (born 20 May 1944[1]) is an English former first-class cricketer who played for Essex and England.
[1][2] Cricket writer Colin Bateman noted that "Fletcher was a tough cookie, a shrewd man who could bluff opponents like the most disarming of poker players.
It was while playing for Royston that Fletcher hit his first-ever century, and he produced his finest bowling figures, taking 9–20 on his first-team debut.
A baptism of fire, he found hostility from the Yorkshire crowd who felt that Phil Sharpe should have been preferred, and Fletcher's experience was not helped by dropping regulation catches at slip.
His cricketing nous was used by both Tony Lewis and Tony Greig when they led the national team, but like many England batters of his era he struggled against Australia, and particularly in dealing with the bowling of Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee in 1974–5; he did make one Test centuries in that Ashes series, in the final test when Thomson and Lillee were incapacitated by injury.
The series did not go well, with negative tactics from both teams, and poor umpiring decisions, which saw Fletcher flick off the bails with his bat after being given out in the Second Test.
As Bateman noted, Fletcher "turned a county of cheerful losers into an even happier bunch as the most successful side in the country through the 1980s".