Speaking on the Two Hacks, One Pro podcast, ESPNcricinfo’s senior correspondent George Dobell explained how he felt Peter Moores “wasn’t given a bloody chance” by the English press pack when he was named England head coach for the second time.
Moores’ two stints were both ill-fated, and both followed disastrous Ashes tours. The first ended in 2009 following a run-in with then-captain Kevin Pietersen, who also resigned from his role in the fallout, while the second lasted just over a year, with England losing a Test series at home to Sri Lanka, drawing a series away against a West Indies side branded “mediocre” by incoming ECB chairman Colin Graves, and, most ignominiously of all, crashing out of the 2015 World Cup in the group stages. News of his sacking broke during his final game in charge, a low-key ODI against Ireland.
On an episode of the podcast dedicated to the state of the English cricket media landscape, the conversation turned to Moores, and how he was portrayed in the media.
“There was another England coach, Peter Moores,” said Hampshire captain and podcast host Sam Northeast. “And after that he got labelled as someone who would go back and watch the tape and he was all about analysis and like his coaching going onwards was all stats-based, data-based.”
The latter label hinged, at least partly, on Moores stumbling over his words in an interview with Sky Sports in the aftermath of England’s shock World Cup exit after defeat by Bangladesh, when Moores said “We’ll have to analyse the game data, I mean later”, with a similar misquoting from a radio interview with the BBC around the same time adding to the perception that the coach was too numbers-focussed. However, Dobell, one of Britain’s most respected cricket journalists, feels the press pack had their knives out for him from the start.
So that much quoted 'data' comment from Peter Moores in the BBC interview. Turns out he actually said 'later.' Unfortunate mis-heard word.
— George Dobell (@GeorgeDobell1) March 13, 2015
“‘Data’, rather than ‘later’, was the error,” said Dobell, part of the English press pack at the time. “Peter Moores is a really good example because he wasn’t given a bloody chance the second time around. I thought, my observation, watching us as a media pack with him, he wasn’t given a bloody chance in the second incarnation. [The media said that] he was rubbish before he started, and the more it happened, the more he got nervous, and started to, with respect, not speak brilliantly in press conferences, talk too much, talk in riddles.”
Moores’ perception in county cricket is much different. He is the only coach to have won the County Championship title with two different clubs, and Moeen Ali, in particular, is someone who speaks very highly of him. He made his England debut under Moores in 2014, and when Joe Clarke, then Moeen’s Worcestershire team-mate, wasn’t sure about which club to move to, Moeen’s advice was simple. “When I said, Notts are jumping at me, he said ‘Go and work with Pete Moores. He is the best coach I’ve ever worked with. He will take your game to a new level’,” Clarke told the Wisden Cricket Weekly Podcast.
He also deserves credit for introducing and nurturing some of England’s key players in the 2010s. Matt Prior, Chris Tremlett, and Graeme Swann all debuted under Moores in his first go in charge, while as well as Moeen, Jos Buttler made his debut during Moores’ second stint and Joe Root and Gary Ballance flourished, averaging 94.58 and 69.00 respectively.
“Actually, when he relaxed and talked in smaller groups or in the pub, he was fantastic,” said Dobell. “A brilliant mind, in my opinion. I thought, as a group, we were extremely unfair to him. You can’t really argue with the World Cup results, I guess, and he has to take responsibility. But that was an example of when momentum builds up on a subject and it sort of stops being real. That happened with KP a bit, on both sides, and it gets pretty ugly, and truth gets lost, subtlety gets lost. I thought Peter Moores was much maligned.”
