By Andy Wilson/The Guardian
Perhaps appropriately, given the split of opinion provoked by his reappointment as England coach, the manner of Peter Moores’ departure from Lancashire could be viewed in one of two very different ways.
For a Moores knocker, it would be easy to mock the spectacle of his players scurrying for the pavilion when Warwickshire were strong favourites to inflict their second consecutive defeat, needing 25 runs from 27 balls with five wickets down. Despite hanging on for a draw here, he leaves Lancashire bottom of the Division One table, although these are very early days.
A more charitable view would be that the compelling evening session, with his team scrapping to prevent Warwickshire chasing down a modest target that had been set by poor Lancashire batting, was a fitting way to end the Moores era of five years and two months, stirring memories of the tense finishes that punctuated the historic, and unforgettable, Championship-winning season of 2011.
That was certainly the way he saw it. “We just created a bit of drama,” he joked of Lancashire’s second-innings batting collapse, from 157 for four to 196 all out. “But what a game! Today was strange, because you want a game to come to a fair conclusion, but it was important for us not to lose, and what I loved was the way Simon Kerrigan and Glen Chapple bowled at the end to give us a chance of getting the draw.”
Kerrigan took four for 38, bowling into the footmarks on a worn fourth-day pitch, and offering more encouraging evidence that he is well on the road to recovery after the mauling he took from Shane Watson on that miserable Test debut at The Oval last August.
His victims included Chris Woakes, a fellow debutant on that occasion, and Ian Bell, who batted like a prince for nine balls only to loft his 10th to Jimmy Anderson at mid-off.
It was equally fitting that Chapple was the other man bowling at the death, Moores’ captain throughout his Old Trafford era and now his most likely successor.
Not that Moores had much time to reflect. He was planning a couple of quiet beers with Chapple, Anderson and the rest of his Lancashire lads.
Yesterday, he returned to the National Cricket Performance Centre in Loughborough, an institution he helped to create a decade ago, to begin work on his second coming.
“There’s some medical screening for some of the England lads, so I’ll get into that,” he said. “You start to get into the job, get your head into a different system, share your thoughts with different people.”
The England and Wales Cricket Board had finally confirmed, when Moores was absorbed by the thrilling finish, that Paul Farbrace will be one of those people, having secured his release from Sri Lanka to work in a new position as assistant coach.
“We are grateful to (Sri Lanka) for their understanding and co-operation in releasing Paul from his contract in order to achieve his desire to return to England and to allow him to work with Peter Moores,” said David Collier, the ECB’s chief executive, compensation presumably having been paid to ease Sri Lanka’s initial irritation at the loss of their World Twenty20-winning coach, only four months since they had come to a complicated financial arrangement to secure his release from Yorkshire.
“It’s fantastic to be given the opportunity to work with your own country’s national team,” Farbrace said. “This was an offer that I could not turn down, much as I have enjoyed working with the Sri Lankan players and sharing in their recent success.”
Alastair Cook had been hoping to catch up with Moores over dinner this week in London, where he was playing for Essex against Surrey and completed his second century in consecutive matches on Wednesday. That was not possible because of Moores’ Lancashire commitments so they will now make up for lost time in the east Midlands.
Moores confirmed that he had chosen Farbrace from a list of “two or three” alternatives as his assistant, although he was noncommittal over whether that list included his main rival, Ashley Giles. He had yet to speak to Giles “because it’s obviously a sensitive time. I will, but it’s a balance I’ve been there.”
“We come from the same philosophy,” he said of Farbrace, a fellow former wicketkeeper. “I know Paul from a long time back, so it was a good fit for me as soon as his name was mentioned.”
Farbrace was also be at Loughborough yesterday, with Cook, as the new regime begin preparations for an unusual first game, a one-off, one-day international against Scotland in Aberdeen on May 9. The new era starts here. For Moores’s Lancashire years, the lights really have gone out.
