Former England captain Michael Vaughan has slammed the England & Wales Cricket Board for the way they handled Peter Moores’ sacking, but rates Jason Gillespie to replace him.
Vaughan, writing for The Telegraph, said the ECB needed to treat their employees better.
‘I am not the biggest fan of Peter Moores as a coach but I like him as a person and the only word I can use for the way his sacking was handled is disgraceful,’ wrote Vaughan.
‘It is not the first time this has happened. News broke of Alastair Cook’s sacking as one-day captain before he knew about it and now the same has happened with Peter. It is a poor way to treat two men who have given everything to English cricket. I realise they are not universally popular but they deserved to be treated better by their employers.
‘On the field we know England have to improve but at least we can judge that progress with our own eyes. Off the field the work done is unseen by the England & Wales Cricket Board and they really can’t get any poorer in terms of how they treat people. We need to start seeing some quiet authority and integrity from the ECB.
‘But the ECB brought this on themselves. They had the ideal opportunity to remove Peter at the end of the World Cup. We could have had a new coach bedding in with the team in the West Indies but instead the ECB dithered and we have wasted another month with an Ashes series looming.’
Vaughan revealed that he held talks with the ECB about the role of director of cricket the day after England won the Test against the West Indies in Grenada.
‘It was clear to me that they would not be removing Peter from his job and I felt I could not be the boss of someone I did not rate.’
Vaughan believes Andrew Strauss, who has since been appointed as England’s new director of cricket, is the right man for the job and also endorsed Jason Gillespie, who is the favourite, to replace Moores as coach.
‘There have been a lot of sackings recently but English cricket will be better run for having Strauss at the ECB, Moores at Loughborough and either Jason Gillespie or Justin Langer in charge of the England team.
‘I am a big fan of Gillespie. I like how he has worked at Yorkshire, the way he deals with players, supporters and the media. I like his his carefree attitude. It is important in the England job that the coach does not take himself too seriously and treats success and disappointment in an even manner.
‘Gillespie has a good cricket brain and England badly need someone who has played at the top level. They have lacked the wisdom of someone who knows what it feels like on the good, hard days in Test cricket.’
