Farbrace to assist England new head coach Moores

Peter Moores took over as the new head coach of the England team on Saturday, completing a remarkable return to the job he left in January 2009 when he was sacked alongside Kevin Pietersen.

Paul Farbrace, the coach of Sri Lanka, was named as his assistant, leaving Ashley Giles out of a job. Moores and Farbrace both appeared at a Lord’s press conference alongside Paul Downton and Alastair Cook at 10.30am yesterday after leaving their current positions with immediate effect.

Moores has beaten off competition from Giles, Trevor Bayliss and two county coaches, Mick Newell and Mark Robinson, to be handed a second chance to lead England. He will be in charge of the side in all three formats of the game after the England and Wales Cricket Board decided to unite the jobs under one coach after the Ashes whitewash.

Reappointing Moores is a gamble by Downton, the managing director of the England team, and it is almost an unprecedented step in top level sport for a coach who has failed in a leading job to be given a second chance.

Moores lost the job with England due to poor results and doubts over whether his methods worked with international cricketers. He has since rebuilt his career with Lancashire, leading them to a longed for championship title, but has no further experience at international level.

But this time circumstances are different to when he took over from Duncan Fletcher in 2007.

He inherits an England team in flux with few senior players sure of their places in the team and a captain in Cook who is struggling to adapt to the pressures of the job.

The hands-on style of coaching from Moores may help Cook free his mind to concentrate on recapturing his form which could lead to an improvement in his captaincy that was widely criticised in the winter.

Moores has always maintained strong support among senior figures at Lord’s and emerged almost immediately as a frontrunner.

He was highly rated by Flower, who will have been consulted on his reappointment.

The fortunes of both men have now turned full circle with Moores having appointed Flower to his backroom staff, and now takes over from him as head coach.

Moores’s departure from his job at Lancashire could create a vacancy for Giles, who will be desperately disappointed to have missed out on the England job.

Giles was groomed to replace Flower when he was appointed one-day coach at the end of 2012.

He was appointed to lead the side to the 2015 World Cup but has found himself cut adrift after a tortured winter for England.

Flower’s surprise departure in January left Giles with a chance to prove his credentials on a short tour to the West Indies and at the World Twenty20. Results in the Caribbean were mixed with victory in the one-day series followed by defeat in the Twenty20s. England’s exit in the group phase of the World Twenty20 in Bangladesh was not unexpected but the hammering in their final match by Holland was the final blow of the winter.

Giles can count himself unlucky. He rarely had control of a full strength side due to England’s rotation policy which protected players crucial to the Test team, and would have planned for the World Twenty20 with Graeme Swann and Pietersen in the side.

For Farbrace, his appointment moved very quickly this week once he was certain he was ready to give up his role with Sri Lanka. He met Downton on Thursday and extricated himself from his two-year deal with Sri Lanka Cricket quicker than expected.

He is widely respected in the county game after stints coaching at Yorkshire and Kent.

He was assistant coach to Bayliss, the 51-year-old Australian who was also in the frame to replace Flower, when the pair worked for Sri Lanka and survived the terrorist attack on the team bus in 2009.

One of Moores’s first tasks will be to form the rest of his backroom team with the futures of Graham Gooch, the batting coach, and others high on the agenda.

Robinson, the coach of Sussex, is likely to be involved in the new set-up with more appointments to lead the Lions in the winter.

For Newell to have a chance of the England job in the future he will have to leave Nottinghamshire and gain international experience, possibly following Farbrace’s lead by coaching a side such as Sri Lanka.

Moores’s first match in charge will be against Scotland in Aberdeen on May 9 before a two-match Test series against Sri Lanka followed by a five Test series with India.

-The Telegraph