Cricket: England to take unquestionable risk by recalling Peter Moores as head coach

Peter Moores will be named as England’s new coach on Saturday, five years after being sacked from the job.

His stock has risen of late as inexorably as shares in Ashley Giles, who was originally expected to be offered the chance to lead the side into a new era, have fallen. Moores’ credentials as a coach have never been in doubt but his management of top-level players was seen to be distinctly lacking in his first tenure.

He was dismissed in 2009 after an irrevocable split with Kevin Pietersen, who was also deposed as captain. But other players, including the previous captain, Michael Vaughan, had doubts about the manner in which Moores performed the role, feeling he was much too prescriptive in dealing with high-class players.

Returning to Moores now is unquestionably a risk, but as a county coach he has had unprecedented success. He is the only man to lead two counties, Sussex and Lancashire, to the championship penant.

Giles, appointed as England’s limited-overs coach a little more than a year ago, was being groomed as the successor to Andy Flower. But he departed sooner than anticipated, following England’s disastrous Ashes tour, and Giles failed to halt the slide either in the one-day series against Australia that followed or in the World Twenty20.

His chances of landing the job were perhaps fatally wounded when England finished that campaign in Bangladesh a fortnight ago with a defeat to the Netherlands. They were simply abject.

Giles’ cause has not been helped because Flower, who has stayed on as ECB director of elite coaching, has been a firm supporter of Moores. Giles can consider himself extremely unlucky having been lured to the England cause from Warwickshire, who he guided to the Championship in 2012. Rarely with the strongest side at his disposal, he took England to the Champions Trophy final last year. Now he is out of work.