THE PHIL WALKER INTERVIEW

In masterminding Nottinghamshire’s title-winning Championship season, Peter Moores now stands above all other English coaches. He opens up about his coaching philosophy, what drives him on, and how he learnt to let go of the pain of his time with England

‘“When you’re having this debate about county cricket’s future, our best protection is to say: ‘This is what we might lose.’ The culture around red-ball cricket develops people in a certain way. They buy into it. There’s a certain respect for the game.”

Peter Moores

It’s probably a bit absurd to distil six months of toil and sweat into a single moment, rounding up all those days of creeping monotony and occasional joys, condensing all the rain-offs, sawn-offs and send-offs into one euphoric slap over mid-wicket from your South African overseas in the hazy gloam of a late September day in Nottingham. Yet what is county cricket if not an absurdist’s dream.

When Kyle Verreynne plonked Nathan Gilchrist’s tired half-tracker into the mildly populated stands at Trent Bridge all the wearying strains of an effectively nine-year project just fell away. Nottinghamshire were the champion county. A club that was once a byword for dysfunctionality and underachievement had its first Championship in 15 years and in the eye of it stood two good men, resolute against the ceaseless elements ripping through English cricket.

For the captain, Haseeb Hameed: sweet, sweet catharsis. It had been his hundred earlier in the day against Warwickshire, his fourth of a beautiful personal summer, which had readied the ground for Verreynne’s winning hit (or more accurately, this being county cricket, the hit that secured the bonus point that made it impossible for Surrey to catch them).

And so too for Peter Moores, the man who built the thing. It was Moores who rescued Hameed from near oblivion, who unshackled Ben Duckett, who turned Ben Slater into a run-machine, who brought Lyndon James, Farhan Ahmed and Freddie McCann through from the academy, who persuaded Josh Tongue to make Notts his home when he could have gone anywhere and who, in so doing, became the first coach to win the Championship with three different clubs.