Peter Moores will leave Barbados later this week, en route to Dublin and the Ireland team, insistent that he wants to stay in his job and asking for more time to develop a young England side. There have been inevitable calls for Moores to be replaced following a disastrous World Cup, in which England were eliminated before the knockout stages, and a loss to West Indies in the third Test in Barbados which meant the series was shared with one Test win apiece.
“Coaches always want time,” Moores said on the morning after the match. “I think we’re moving the right way. I think this has been a really good trip in many, many ways internally within that group. Watching us develop, the way people are sort of getting how you have to go about being successful at international cricket, the intensity it needs. Some people are starting to get to the point, I think they’re feeling a bit more relaxed with an England shirt on, which is important. It doesn’t mean you’re not proud and you’re not up for it, but it’s about being able to play the game and still relax and do your skill.
“So I think that’s happening. It helps having a bit of stability around the team as well. Whether I get to carry on I don’t know. That’s not my choice. It’s not within my control. What is important to me is to totally commit to it. I get frustrated though when people say things about me that aren’t true. When people say about laptops … it couldn’t be further from the truth. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me. But it’s not fact and it’s not right. It’s not how I operate as a coach. If you ask any player I deal with, they’ll tell you that. A coach’s CV is his players.
“If the players think you can coach, you can coach. If the players think you can’t, then you can’t. Of course results count. But the emergence of teams and players – and I’ve built teams at Sussex and Lancashire, I’ve been through this three or four times at county and international level – is never a straightforward curve. It goes up and down. You invest in people you feel can go on and become special players.”
Moores has been in the job for a year and although the one-day sides have not been successful, the Test team has started to produce consistency with four wins out of the five previous matches. But the defeat in Bridgetown is widely regarded as making the tour another failure. “If teams emerged overnight, it would be easy,” Moores argues.
“You watch this Australian team, it took a while to grow to that point. And we are in that journey. People can see talented cricketers. Take the bowling – the best bowler on either side took the most wickets, Jimmy Anderson. Our next-best bowler, Broad, took the next most wickets. You can’t suddenly chuck in players and they will get a load of wickets. It doesn’t work like that. The game is that you have a certain skill level and ability that you try to develop over time.
“It’s a tough environment to try to develop in. You are looking for people that respond rapidly to that and learn fast. Moeen Ali is a real classic example of that. He will have learned a lot from yesterday. Trying to bowl on a turning pitch, bit out of rhythm, very tough, pressure’s on, you learn from that because he’s that sort of cricketer and next time he’ll be better.”
