The Sunday Mail
Peter Moores is set to be recalled as England coach five years after being dramatically axed from the job, the BBC and The Times both reported at the weekend.
Earlier, a brief statement issued by the England and Wales Cricket Board said managing director Paul Downton and England captain Alastair Cook would hold a media conference at 10:30am local time at Lord’s on Saturday “accompanied by the new head coach”.
England have been without a head coach since Andy Flower stepped down as team director in January following the 5-0 Ashes thrashing in Australia.
Limited overs coach Ashley Giles, the former England spinner, appeared to be in pole position to replace Flower but his cause was not helped by the team’s embarrassing loss to minnows, the Netherlands, at the recent World Twenty20 in Bangladesh.
Moores, now at Lancashire, Nottinghamshire’s Mick Newell and Sussex’s Mark Robinson, all of whom have overseen County Championship success, are understood to have been interviewed during the past week as has Australian Trevor Bayliss, the former Sri Lanka coach.
In a two-year spell from 2007 to 2009, former Sussex wicketkeeper Moores led England in seven Test series, starting with a 3-0 win over West Indies, after replacing Duncan Fletcher.
However, he was forced out in 2009 following a rift with South African-born Kevin Pietersen that cost the star batsman the England captaincy, although other players were said to be unhappy with Moores’s management style.
But whoever is appointed won’t have to deal with Pietersen this time around after the ECB sensationally terminated the international career of their all-time leading run-scorer following the Ashes debacle — a decision they’ve still to explain fully.
Shortly after his England exit, Moores joined Lancashire in February 2009, having previously guided Sussex to the County Championship title in 2003.
Lancashire had not won the championship outright since 1934 but their long wait ended in 2011.
They were though relegated the following season but returned to the First Division in 2013.
However, were Bayliss, currently the coach of Indian Premier League side Kolkata Knight Riders, to be appointed it would be seen as a smack in the face for England’s attempts to provide a home-grown successor to Flower.
The former Zimbabwe batsman remains in the ECB hierarchy, having been appointed to the newly-created post of technical director of elite coaching last month.
England’s next match, a one-day international against Scotland in Aberdeen on May 9, is less than a month away. — AFP
