The Elvis Presley fan who always had England on his mind

It takes something to knock Mushtaq Ahmed off the top of the bill at Hove these days. But it wasn't another wicket for the mercurial leg-spinner yesterday which drew the biggest cheer at the County Ground; rather the announcement that Peter Moores had just got the most important job in English cricket.

Moores has never forgotten his roots and the greybeards in the Hove deckchairs will never forget the part he played in transforming perennial underachievers into the strongest force in the county game, a legacy which has been carried on by Mark Robinson.

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Moores became interested in coaching long before even his own modest playing career took shape, first with Worcestershire and then Sussex.

As a youngster on the Lord's groundstaff, he would always be the last to leave when the coach Don Wilson held court in the bar after the players had been paid their £32 weekly wage. He recalled: "I was always happy to make sure there was a full glass in front of the coach as long as the stories and his theories about the game kept coming."

By the time he joined Sussex in 1985, he had already taken his first tentative steps into coaching, first at a well-heeled public school in Zimbabwe and the following season with Free State in South Africa, but his real grounding would take place during winters at Sussex. "I was virtually full-time at Hove in the indoor nets," he recalled. "It was a great experience because one minute you would be coaching a group of 10-year-olds and the next session might be with a 70-year-old getting his eye in again before the start of the new season."

When Moores became Sussex coach in 1998, he was quite happy to steal ideas from other sports. The days when pre-season training consisted of laps around the outfield seemed light years away when he was leading his players with boyish enthusiasm around Army assault courses or on orienteering expeditions.

His attention to detail became legendary. Moores is acknowledged as one of the first coaches who embraced new technology, but when he took over in 1998 the days when coaches would spend hours analysing performances on a lap-top were still some way off. Instead, to help preparation, Moores would get Sussex's librarian Rob Boddie to pore over old Wisdens to discover which grounds favoured spin and which seam in case it gave his side the slightest edge.

The pace of change off the field under Moores was not always reflected on it during those early years. In 2000, Sussex finished bottom of the Championship and he came close to losing his job. But slowly his efforts paid off and in 2003 the county won the Championship for the first time.

On Sussex's pre-season tour of 2002, the squad were devastated after Umer Rashid and his brother drowned in Grenada. The job of telling Rashid's father that he had lost two sons must have been incredibly hard but, somehow, the situation brought out the best in him.

Moores will be like a breath of fresh air after Duncan Fletcher in terms of his relationship with the counties and his dealings with the media. A family man with two children, he enjoys good food and wine and will happily croon his way through the Elvis Presley songbook, especially after a few glasses of red.

Some people may regard him as a safe selection, but Moores is someone who should be good for English cricket, not just Team England.

Bruce Talbot has covered Sussex for the last 14 years as cricket writer for the 'Brighton Argus'