England head coach candidates: Who will replace Peter Moores?
We compare the contenders for the top job...
Tuesday 12 May 2015 18:56, UK
England need a new head coach, again.
With the appointment of Andrew Strauss as the new director of cricket on Saturday and the subsequent sacking of Peter Moores, England are on the lookout for the right man to lead the team into a crucial Ashes summer.
Here are some of the candidates in line for the job...
Jason Gillespie - 6/4 Sky Bet odds
The clear favourite for the job, but as a proud Australian and an Ashes series looming, will he take it? Gillespie led Yorkshire to the County Championship title last season and has helped develop the likes of Joe Root, Gary Ballance, Adam Lyth and Adil Rashid, all of whom would be familiar faces in the England dressing room. England’s incoming chairman Colin Graves is a huge fan from his time working with Gillespie as executive chairman of Yorkshire and will try his best to land him. He recently turned down the chance to coach South Australia.
Michael Vaughan - 25/1 Sky Bet odds
Looked over for the director of cricket role, with Strauss preferred, but still a respected voice reflected by the fact he was a contender for the job in the first place. Who knows, perhaps he didn’t get the job because he’s being lined-up as England’s head coach? Although having never coached at county nor international level before it’s highly unlikely. Still, his name, and Paul Collingwood’s are two in particular consistently linked with a role in England’s coaching set-up. Perhaps too soon for both, but their input would be valuable in some capacity, possibly as selectors?
Gary Kirsten - 14/1 Sky Bet odds
Headlines a number of candidates currently coaching in the IPL, but is the one with the most international pedigree, having led India to the World Cup and number one in the world in 2011. He then did the same with his homeland, South Africa, a year later. Moved away from international coaching though due to the burden of travel, but could England lure him back? If not, Stephen Fleming is highly thought of due to tremendous levels of success in charge of the Chennai Super Kings, or there is always Tom Moody, who seems to forever be in the running for the England job.
Paul Farbrace - 7/1 Sky Bet odds
It looks like Farbrace will get an initial chance to stake a claim, by likely leading England in the upcoming two-Test series against a highly-rated New Zealand. He is well liked among the players and highly rated as a coach, which included a brief spell in charge of Sri Lanka in 2014, during which time he led them to World T20 and Asia Cup success. He will likely need an emphatic win over the Black Caps though to move up from his role as no.2, although it should not be forgotten that England’s most successful coach of recent times made a similar step-up…
Andy Flower - 16/1 Sky Bet odds
Surely not. But Flower did get England out of a similar mess when Moores was sacked for the first time in 2009. He’s also got strong ties to Strauss and is still involved with the England set-up at Loughborough as the ECB’s Technical Director of Elite Coaching. Even so, it is a long shot that he’ll be brought back in with Flower himself having tired of the travelling involved with coaching England full-time, and his methods supposedly grown stale among the England side, ending with a 5-0 humiliation in the 2013/14 Ashes.