Katich and Ford considered for England head coach jobs
Simon Katich
Simon Katich and Graham Ford are on the list of potential England head coaches being targeted by Rob Key, the ECB’s new managing director of men’s cricket.
Key, who took up his post this week, is understood to want to split the head coach roles between the Test and white-ball teams and has begun making approaches to potential candidates, to encourage them to apply for one or other of the positions.
Graham Ford
The Times understands that Katich, the former Australia batsman who played 56 Tests, is highly regarded by Key and has already been informally sounded out. He could be a good option for either the limited-overs teams or Test side and is already an ECB employee, as the head coach of Manchester Originals in the Hundred. The 46-year-old resigned as coach of Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL in February, after disagreeing with their strategy at the player auction, so he could be available to take up a position with England almost immediately.
Ford, 61, who has previously coached Sri Lanka and Surrey, is out of work and would also be available straight away, having left his post as Ireland’s head coach in November. Key worked closely with Ford and rates the South African highly, describing him as a “great coach to work with” and saying they had a “joint focus because of our shared attitude to betterment” when they worked together at Kent, where Ford was director of cricket from 2005-09.
Ottis Gibson, who has previously had two spells as England’s bowling coach and is now the head coach at Yorkshire, is understood to have turned down an approach from Sir Andrew Strauss, who was acting as interim director of cricket until last week, because he has just signed a three-year deal with Yorkshire. Strauss’s approach came as a surprise and an annoyance to Yorkshire, given their situation and their need to emerge out of the racism scandal that engulfed the county last year.