“Bloody right I would!” said Peter Moores when asked if he would consider the treble his Nottinghamshire side are two-thirds of the way to completing – after Saturday’s Finals Day triumph – to be “proper”, given that the unfinished business is merely the Division Two title. From Tuesday they host their nearest rivals, Worcestershire, who are 32 points behind. Promotion could be sealed in a hurry.
For Moores this is success at a third county, after ending Sussex’s 164-year wait for a Championship win in 2003 and winning the title with a homegrown Lancashire side in 2011, and the second time he has succeeded after the crushingly disappointing spells as England coach. Lesser characters would have been broken by one of them; Moores has overcome both. Paul Downton’s infamous soundbite – “the outstanding coach of his generation” – was an unbearable weight and merely provided a stick with which to beat Moores. But at domestic level Downton was not remotely incorrect.
Having dipped the toe as a consultant, this is Moores’ first season in charge. He inherited a deep, talented squad that had been relegated; they were underachieving and overweight, while the impact of the shock retirement of James Taylor should not be underestimated. Such success so soon, if rounded off in the Championship, would be a special achievement, the first treble since Warwickshire in 1994.
The focus was promotion but Moores knew they had the making of a mighty white-ball side. He began by whipping them into shape – Luke Fletcher lost 19kg and Brendan Taylor, one of the stars of the T20 final victory over Birmingham Bears, 10kg –then devised a white-ball game plan that played to their strengths. The boundaries at Trent Bridge were brought in (which helped their brutal batsmen, and reduced the ground covered by their iffy fielders) and the pitch flattened out. The run-rate there has been a whopping 10.45, which forced their varied bowling attack to innovate and operate at the top of their game. They obliged.
Notts’ hunger to improve has been helped by the focused training time afforded by the block format and, after losing their first two games, Michael Lumb and Greg Smith to retirement and Luke Fletcher to a sickening injury (“a horrible day. Players were in tears,” said Moores), won 11 of 14, and played the same XI for 10 straight games. “We’ve worked really hard,” Moores said, “we’ve had a load of fun doing it and we’ve found this way of people delivering when it counts.”
Most pleasing for Moores has been watching the continued improvement of senior players such as Samit Patel and Steven Mullaney. “In county cricket you are playing all the time,” he said. “International cricket’s the opposite. You play less and prepare more. So at county level, those that can prepare well in the limited time available will thrive, whether 18 or 35. When a player who’s more mature starts to improve, that’s really exciting to watch.”
Moores is not the type to make excuses for his time with England (“When somebody decides they don’t want you as coach you’ve got to take it on the chin”) but he thinks the 2015 World Cup “came at the wrong time”. “The most hurtful thing,” he said, “was the whole concept that you coach with a restrictive style, which was completely unfounded.”
Saturday’s gallivanting victory, he feels, is much more reflective of his coaching ethos. “This year we played our style, we probably scored 200 more than any other side in T20, we’ve scored more runs in 50-over cricket than any other side and we’ve been more aggressive in four-day cricket than any other side.”
Another crack at international cricket (overseas, though) is not something Moores will rule out. But right now he is doing what he does best and is mighty happy in his work. “I’m just loving coaching. I could coach the under-12s and have a great time,” he said. In this sort of mood he has so much to give the game.
