Before England’s third Test match against Sri Lanka at The Oval next week, Andrew Flintoff will work with the English batters. Marcus Trescothick will have a brief respite before taking on the role of acting head coach for the white-ball team during the home series against Australia in September.
While Flintoff has been a part of England’s white-ball setup for the past year, including the T20 World Cup in June, he will not be a part of the coaching staff under Trescothick for the three Twenty20 Internationals and five One-Day Internationals against Australia that take place next month. His Hundred side Northern Superchargers finished fourth in the league, just missing out on qualification. This was his first time coaching at the level.
He is anticipated to join the Test team on Wednesday for the first of two training sessions. During the third Test, he will be a member of Brendon McCullum’s team. His tenure in the post is very temporary, and it is not anticipated that he will participate in the winter tours to Pakistan and New Zealand.
After the second Test at Lord’s, which is set to conclude on Monday, Trescothick will take a few days off before reuniting with his white-ball team ahead of the first T20 international, which is set to take place on September 11 at the Utilita Bowl near Southampton. The majority of his backroom team will be the same as Matthew Mott’s, with the temporary addition of Michael Yardy, the England Under-19s coach.
He has not yet determined if he will submit an application to become the full-time white-ball head coach. “I’m still very focused on the batting stuff with the Test team,” he told Sky Sports on Friday. “I’m going to let this play out and see what happens for this period of time, and see how much I enjoy doing the head coach’s role and then go from there really. I’m quite open to the idea of seeing what’s going to happen.”
Jos Buttler, his former teammate from Somerset who has been backed to stay as captain but may give up the wicketkeeping duties in the Twenty20 Internationals, will operate alongside Trescothick. “It’s definitely something we’ll think about,” Trescothick said, “because we can try different options, give it a go for a period of time and see what reaction it has on his captaincy and on the team.
“For whatever reason, there were a tough couple of World Cups that they had in the meantime and we’ve come out of those not feeling too great about our one-day cricket. But it’s still in a really good place, and Jos is going to lead that forward for a period of time at the moment – and I don’t see it changing.”
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