Ben Stokes’s coaching ambition highlights a major problem with English cricket

By now, Ben Stokes will be very familiar with making headlines and his recent declaration that he wants to coach the England Test team one day is no exception.

“I’m doing my level three coaching now while I’m still playing, because when the day comes that I’m not playing anymore, I’d love to be able to have all that stuff signed off and done,” Stokes told former England teammates Jos Buttler and Stuart Broad on the For the Love of Cricket podcast.

“I know what I want to do in terms of staying within the game, which is to be a coach, and would I love to be coach of England one day? Absolutely. I just really like the idea of being in some form of leadership away from playing.”

Stokes’s ambition and desire to give back to the game is no real surprise to anyone who watched him play for England, but his comments instead raise concerns about the current coaching setup in England, especially when it comes to English coaches.

Stokes’s retirement and Brendon McCullum’s exit as England’s Test coach mean there is a new era approaching for the national team. Joe Root has been reinstalled as captain, and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) decided to replace its head coach from New Zealand with... a new head coach from New Zealand.

Stephen Fleming will take over from McCullum as the Test coach beginning this winter with the tour of South Africa. Fleming’s appointment means the ECB has hired a fourth foreign coach to oversee the men’s Test team since 2009, with only two English coaches – Peter Moores and Chris Silverwood – being handed the job on a full-time basis during the last 27 years.

Why is that? Are there no English coaches available? Does the ECB think those that are available simply aren’t good enough to make the step up?

Since 1986, England have had 10 full-time coaches for the men’s Test team (11 if you count both of Moores’s stints separately) and six of the men chosen for the job have been English. Yet, the most successful periods for England have come under coaches from abroad.

Duncan Fletcher hails from Zimbabwe and led England to their famous Ashes victory over Australia in 2005; Andy Flower – another Zimbabwean – coached the team to the world No 1 spot between 2009 and 2014; and Australian Trevor Bayliss, as joint Test and ODI coach, oversaw England’s World Cup-winning ODI campaign. This century, England have won 23 Tests and lost 24 under English coaches, yet with overseas coaches, they have a record of 126 wins and 91 losses. That results in a win-loss ratio of 1.38 for foreign coaches compared with 0.96 for Englishmen.

Was that recent history fresh in the mind of ECB director of cricket Rob Key, whose task it was to appoint McCullum’s successor? Perhaps.

Before Fleming was picked, Flower was the supposed frontrunner and Australia’s Justin Langer and Tom Moody were also linked with the vacancy. In terms of English coaches, Jonathan Trott and Richard Dawson were the two main candidates.

Interestingly, of the six names rumoured to be in contention, only Dawson plies his trade as the head coach of an English county. Of the 18 counties in England and Wales, 12 have head coaches who are English and yet only Dawson was considered. Since 2014, he has taken a traditional pathway in coaching, first being appointed as Yorkshire’s 2nd XI coach before stints as head coach of Gloucestershire, the England Lions and now Glamorgan. During 2022-24, he was also a member of the senior England coaching staff, which probably explains why he was the only county coach in contention.

It does seem as though the ECB gives little value to county cricket as a pathway to the Test side. The two coaches who made that progression, Moores and Silverwood, both failed to bring success to the England team. And for better or worse, it does feel as though that route for English coaches is now closed off.

Take the Hundred for example. It is the ECB’s brainchild and since its inception in 2021 has been the focus of the domestic season with a prime spot on the calendar in August. It is the poster competition for the English game, and in this current season only one of the eight franchises involved has an English coach – and that is Moores, who will not be appointed England’s coach for a third time.

The lack of investment and trust in English coaches is a major issue, one that is limiting their opportunities to excel at home and abroad. There has never been an English coach in the IPL, for example. In Australia’s Big Bash League, Moores and Andrew Flintoff are the only Englishmen to have been handed an opportunity to coach.

So, what can be done to amend this?

Former England bowler Darren Gough proposed that Fleming be supported by coaches with English backgrounds.

“I’m not too fussed about the Fleming appointment but what I will say is that I want every other coach in that setup to be English because the English coaches are not getting their chance to shine on the world circuit because they’re not getting their chance in their own country to coach the national side,” he explained.

“[The] head coach can be a New Zealander or an Australian, but I think every other coach within that setup has got to be English.”

Marcus Trescothick, who will lead England on an interim basis for September’s Pakistan series, should remain in post, so too should Sarah Taylor as fielding coach.

Previously, Paul Collingwood and James Anderson have stepped in as specialist coaches following their retirements and Key has overseen a transition for ex-players such as Flintoff, Graeme Swann and Moeen Ali through England’s pathway.

These are positive steps, but more needs to be done to showcase and improve the talent of English coaches because, if nothing changes, Stokes’s dream of one day coaching England will remain just a dream.

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