PETER MOORES is younger, slimmer and more cheery than Duncan Fletcher, but there are similarities. Both men believe in the on-field autonomy of the captain, preferring to do their work behind the scenes before and after matches. It was interesting to observe Tom Moody, the Sri Lanka coach, directing operations in the World Cup against England. Walkie-talkie in hand, he sent messages to one of his coaches on the boundary, to be relayed to captain Mahela Jayawardene.

Fletcher and Moores believe in players working things out for themselves. Both are innovators, seeking to improve performances by the tiny margins that are the difference between success and failure at the highest level.

“I will look at a player’s stats with him,” Moores said when he took over the national academy in 2005. “How does he score in the first innings versus the second? Does he get out to seam or spin? Can he dive to his right and his left? Can he throw the stumps down right-handed and left-handed?”

Like Fletcher, Moores has a calm exterior, with a more easygoing, media-friendly manner in public. But a fire burns within. “He’s quite laid back most of the time, but when he goes, he really explodes,” says Robin Martin-Jenkins, the Sussex allrounder who played under Moores. He cites Moores’s intensity as a strength (“his energy and passion rub off on you”) and as his only weakness (“he can be too intense at times”).

Moores, 44, is a cricket junkie. Last year The Wisden Cricketer magazine ran a scheme to adopt an amateur club for the summer. Moores was approached about the academy hosting the club at Loughborough for a day. He agreed, and ran the whole day himself, organising coaching drills, net sessions and ice baths for a bunch of wide-eyed Cornish club players.

If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing properly, seemed to be the message. England’s players should expect no half-measures.

Even before Moores had properly taken over the reins from Rod Marsh at Loughborough, he moved his family from Sussex to Quorn in the East Midlands. “We love Sussex,” he said at the time. “But I thought if I was going to do this job, we would do it as a family.”

Moores, born in Macclesfield, kept wicket for the King’s School in Macclesfield first XI at 13, turned down Durham University for the MCC groundstaff and had two years at Worcestershire before ending up at Sussex in 1985. He was a moderate wicketkeeper-batsman, but always had the future in mind. “I always knew I could coach. I always knew I could motivate people,” he said when taking over the academy. Asked about succeeding Fletcher, he said it would be “fantastic, if in time it felt right and somebody offered it”.

Moores captained Sussex for one disastrous season in 1997 before being replaced by Chris Adams. He became coach and the two forged a championship-winning partnership. The crowning glory of his nine-year tenure was guiding Sussex to their first championship in 2003.

Under Moores, Sussex became a force in the four-day game, but they were less impressive in the one-day format, another similarity with Fletcher’s England. “Sussex targeted the championship and Moorsey would probably admit it was to the detriment of the one-day game,” says Martin-Jenkins. “But as soon as we won that first championship, we targeted the one-dayers very strongly. I guess he will have to do that with England.”

It is easy to see Moores’s appointment as a Steve McClarenesque cop-out, but that is unfair on Moores and the legacy that Fletcher leaves. Moores has the credentials and the personality to make a success of the job.

John Stern is editor of The Wisden Cricketer