Marcus Trescothick got the start every interim coach dreams of and then spent his media duties talking about somebody else. England had just beaten Pakistan by an innings and 103 runs in the first Test at Headingley, a win wrapped up inside three rain-shortened days, and the questions put to the stand-in head coach were not really about the cricket. They were about how long he keeps the job, and about the New Zealander who will take it from him. Stephen Fleming becomes England‘s Test coach once this series is done, and the shape of his backroom staff is now the most interesting unanswered question of the English summer.
It matters because the structure above the Test team has been redrawn twice in two months. Brendon McCullum was sacked as Test coach in July but remains England’s white-ball head coach through to the 2027 World Cup; Joe Root has returned as Test captain, with Harry Brook leading the one-day and T20 sides; and Trescothick, a McCullum-era assistant, was handed the three Pakistan Tests on an interim basis. England have yet to announce who will sit alongside Fleming when the handover comes.
Trescothick: ‘I’d love to carry on’
Trescothick, at least, has made his position plain. Asked by the Guardian whether he expects to remain part of the Test group, the former Test opener said: “I’d love to carry on, of course. First and foremost, I want to be involved in all formats of the game because it’s a wonderful place to be, working with the best and seeing England cricketers do well. But that’s not really for me to judge, so I’ll wait and see what happens.”
He is not making the case from a weak position. England’s four-man seam attack of Jofra Archer, Ollie Robinson, Josh Tongue and Gus Atkinson bowled Pakistan out twice, Robinson and Tongue taking eight wickets apiece, and the batting still moved at 4.55 runs an over. Fleming, meanwhile, was in daily contact with Root throughout the match — a transition being conducted by telephone rather than by ambush.
What Stephen Fleming’s England coaching staff could look like
The one name to have surfaced will be familiar to anyone who has watched a Chennai Super Kings season. Mike Hussey, Fleming’s long-time colleague at the IPL franchise, has confirmed he was sounded out about the England batting coach role — while being careful to frame it as nothing more than a conversation.
“We get on really well and have worked a lot together,” Hussey told Fox Sports News. “It was just a bit of a passing comment, really, saying: ‘Look, what do you reckon? Would you think about being the batting coach?'” The former Australia batter, who spent this summer coaching Welsh Fire in the Hundred, added: “I have not been able to give it any thought whatsoever… Would I? I wouldn’t say never to anything really, whether it’d be England, whether it be Australia, India, Pakistan, South Africa.”
Hardly a signing announcement. But it tells you Fleming is already thinking about specialist roles, and that he is minded to bring in people he trusts.
‘We’re not Brendon and Ben’
What Trescothick did offer was the clearest statement yet of how this England intend to differ from the last one. “We’re not Brendon and Ben,” he told BBC Sport, while accepting the new group had taken the “best bits” of the old regime. On Root’s captaincy: “You saw some things with Joe which were really exciting and really calming at the same time because it needed that influence on it at the moment. Maybe be a little bit more simple with some of the plans, a bit more clear direction.”
Calm is a deliberate word after a year that took in an Ashes defeat, off-field controversy, Ben Stokes’s retirement from international cricket and McCullum’s removal from the Test job. One win over a poor Pakistan side settles little, as Trescothick would concede. But it buys the interim coach a fortnight of relevance as the series moves on to Lord’s — and possibly a good deal longer than that, if the man on the other end of the phone likes what he has seen.
