\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\nStephen Fleming, England\u2019s latest men\u2019s Head Coach, was notably absent from the inaugural Test of the Root-Fleming era, preferring to stay at home with family in New Zealand. Admittedly his prerogative, as his official duties begin later on with tour of South Africa beginning in mid-December, though the optics were decidedly poor.<\/p>\n
But what did the England team miss by Fleming\u2019s absence? This is, in part, one for the trio at the ECB\u2019s helm \u2013 Thompson, Gould and Key. Not content with lavishing millions of pounds on a Head Coach in McCullum (initially, approximately \u00a32 million per annum, with a substantial rise in 2024 upon his extension to coach England\u2019s white ball teams) \u2013 a person who has been addicted to gambling in all walks of life, and ultimately had to be sacked for his ingrained addiction \u2013 the trio have lashed out on another high priced Kiwi with a four-year contract (the exact fee, it seems, not as yet publicly disclosed).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fleming also appointed, like McCullum, with no experience of coaching a Test cricket team \u2013 none whatsoever! This is, in its wake, robbing English county championship cricket of much needed support. Can you really imagine this happening in the world of professional football, appointing someone without any directly relevant experience?<\/p>\n
The erstwhile Brendon McCullum\u2019s merit was the refreshed positive attitude he brought to the England players following their languishing in a lengthy series of defeats. Ironically, he pointedly brought on board a Kiwi sports psychologist \u2013 Gilbert Enoka \u2013 whilst virtually ignoring the ECB\u2019s appointed Chris Marshall (in post up to December last year, his contract not being renewed).<\/p>\n
The ECB has replaced Marshall with someone by the rather exotic name of Jon Marzetti. So with Marzetti now in the wings, that is the England team\u2019s psychology role filled. And Joe Root has taken on himself, perhaps rightly, to lay down team cultural guidelines \u2013 including don\u2019t drink alcohol and get inebriated in public when celebrating a win, and suchlike, with veiled sanctions up his sleeve. Root is also taking care of on-field tactics and match strategy, as displayed during the just completed three match series against Pakistan. He didn\u2019t need to either fill-in Marcus Trescothick or have resort to a non-playing \u201ccaptain\u201d as in golf\u2019s Ryder Cup style. So, realistically, what dimension of real importance can Fleming bring that\u2019s not already catered for. IMO, precisely Nothing!\u00a0<\/p>\n
The same basically goes for Australia, India et alia.<\/em> When you think of players like Frank Worrell, Garry Sobers, Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards captaining West Indies, can you name the Head Coach \u2013 if, indeed, there was one! And likewise Allan Border and Pat Cummins for Australia, and Imran Khan, Wasim Akram and Babar Azam for Pakistan; and Andy Flower for Zimbabwe. Just witness their body language and leadership to realise that any Head Coach would, very largely, be superfluous!<\/p>\nIn England\u2019s case, a Head Coach has been something of an obsession to \u201cget right\u201d, partly because the selectors have chopped and changed the captain so frequently and virtually at whim. Consider the 1970s: the succession of Illingworth, Denness, Lewis, Edrich, Greig, Brearley and Boycott. Then for the 1980s: Botham, Fletcher, Willis, Gower, Emburey, Chris Cowdrey and Gooch. And, rest assured, I\u2019m not just making this up for a good story!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of the specialist coaching roles are undeniably valuable, such as England\u2019s Sarah Taylor who Adam Gilchrist rated the world\u2019s best in action and is currently teaching Jamie Smith how to do it more effectively at Test level. But having a batting coach is a monumental waste of money: all, or nearly all, specialist and all-rounder batsmen will reply on their own personal coach, as and when needed. Likewise for the counterpart bowlers.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peter Kettle | 1:09pm BST 23 September 2026 Stephen Fleming, England\u2019s latest men\u2019s Head Coach, was notably absent from the inaugural Test of the Root-Fleming era, preferring to stay at home with family in New Zealand. Admittedly his prerogative, as his official duties begin later on with tour of South Africa beginning in mid-December, though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":264040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6803],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-264039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sports.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}