Andrew Strauss may struggle to find the right man for the England job

New national director has few options to succeed Moores. The way he was sacked will not help

Andrew Strauss congratulates Alastair Cook after England beat Australia in Durham during the 2013 Ashes (Getty) (Getty)

Andrew Strauss has finally been confirmed as the new director of England cricket. His first task will be to find a replacement for the coach, Peter Moores, whose departure was officially announced shortly afterwards.

If the appointment of Strauss was the worst kept secret in the game, the removal of Moores from the job, for the second time, was the second worst. At least Strauss knew he was being hired, while the rest of the world was told before Moores that he was being sacked.

There is a distinct lack of English candidates for the coach’s role. Indeed, there is a shortage of potential recruits from any country or planet. The favourite would seem to be Yorkshire’s Australian coach, Jason Gillespie, the former fast bowler who played 71 Tests.

Jason Gillespie (GETTY IMAGES)

Gillespie has not heard anything yet from England, which is actually in their favour. They were not compounding their poor behaviour by trying to speak to someone else while plotting the departure of the man already in the job.

Paul Farbrace, Moores’ deputy, will take charge as coach while Strauss conducts his search for the successor. Farbrace was also Gillespie’s deputy at Yorkshire. The connection is there, the conclusion can be drawn.

But Gillespie, while he probably wants to stretch himself as far as possible, seems perfectly happy at Yorkshire and will not jump immediately if England come running. It is curious, though possibly the nature of the beast, that he is gaining support from people who do not know how he operates as a coach and have never seen his teams play.

The reputation of opinion pollsters was slightly higher last night than that of the England and Wales Cricket Board, who will take some time to recover from their handling of this issue. It makes the retrieval of the Ashes this summer harder rather than easier.

Strauss, who sanctioned – perhaps insisted on – Moores’ demise before taking the new job himself, may have trouble luring a decent candidate considering how poorly they treated the former incumbent.

Moores will understandably consider that he was given insufficient time to mould his team but he was on permanently unsafe ground from the moment he was hired last spring, five years after being sacked for the first time.

England head coach Peter Moores was sacked (Getty Images)

That ground became treacherous when England failed to win the recent Test series against West Indies, the least accomplished of the five opponents they will play this year. England were 1-0 up but lost the final Test in Barbados despite having a large first-innings lead in a low-scoring match.

Moores, who never had a chance to prepare England for an Ashes series in either of his tenures as coach, will rightly feel hard done by. If it was felt necessary that he should go, possibly as part of Strauss’s agreement to come in, he should certainly have been informed in person before being allowed to fly from the Caribbean to Ireland, where England were playing an entirely needless one-off one-day match on Friday.

It was in Dublin that news began to leak about Moores. The ECB, however, continued their apparent code of omerta until yesterday afternoon. Moores said: “At the moment it’s difficult to put into words how I feel except to say how disappointed I am in the way my term as England coach has ended. I will walk away knowing I’ve given my all to the role and always put the team at the front of any decision-making.”

Strauss is expected to hold a press conference early next week where he will outline his vision for his new job. Much of this may reflect the importance of player responsibility and solid preparation, about which he was evangelical in his three-year period as England captain.

By removing Moores, albeit in this ham-fisted manner, he has shown a ruthless streak which too many doubted he had. But to have led England to two Ashes victories, home and away, as he did takes inner steel. No one should doubt his plentiful supply of that.

Strauss will have responsibility for the selection and development of the England team and the new coach will report directly to him. This may mean the disbandment of the present selection committee and the end for the national selector, James Whitaker, although someone will have to travel thousands of miles a year watching county cricket to make sure likely players are properly vetted. That is what selectors do.

Gary Kirsten is also believed to be in the running for the job (Getty Images)

Strauss will have plenty of advice about who to appoint. A trawl of the counties reveals no suitable English candidate, save perhaps for Ashley Giles, the former one-day coach who was overlooked last year and has only recently joined Lancashire.

This too is a poor reflection on the game here: potential international coaches as hard to come by as left-arm spinners and fast bowlers. Moores was outstanding but deemed not to have been good enough.

From overseas, the names of Gary Kirsten, Justin Langer, Stephen Fleming and Tom Moody have been suggested. The first two will not be interested, the third and fourth may also prefer their present lifestyles.

The money to be earned in the Indian Premier League for 10 weeks’ work a year is handsome. Doing it for England may involve slightly more, say £350,000 a year, but it involves a relentless schedule and months away from home, as this year demonstrates

And you can never be sure when your bosses are planning to sack you without letting you know. That may be the hardest sell for Strauss.