Graham Ford, who turned down an offer to work with the Indian cricket team in 2007, might replace Peter Moores as the new England coach even though retired spinner Ashley Giles is also in the race for the job, according to media reports in London.
The Sunday Telegraph claimed England captain Kevin Pietersen has no trust in Moores' capability as a strategist or analyser and believes the coach does not have the vision required to make England a champion team.
"Talk inside the England camp is of Kevin Pietersen favouring the appointment of his mentor Graham Ford," noted cricket writer Scyld Berry wrote in the daily.
The report dismissed the notion that Pietersen and Moores fell out after Michael Vaughan was ignored for the West Indies tour by the four-member selection panel, of which Moores is a key member.
"Pietersen has never rated Moores. He had to seek assurances from the coach before accepting the captaincy last August and has combined uneasily with him ever since. It was always a marriage of convenience," the daily said.
According to the report, Pietersen felt Moores didn't provide enough inputs that led to England's failure to defend 387 in the fourth innings of the Chennai Test which India won in memorable fashion.
Though England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) Managing Director Hugh Morris has been entrusted to broker peace between the captain and the coach, the report claimed Moores is on his way out.
"Pietersen does not like Moores' intense, regimented and statistical methods. He feels the coach lacks the sharpest tactical and strategic acumen, with his absence of international playing experience telling," Berry said.
The writer claimed that during England's tour of India, he asked two players who they thought the best coach in England and "they uttered an unequivocal answer -- Kent's Graham Ford."
"It was merely interesting at the time. But now that conversation makes more sense. Maybe there were already rumblings," he said.
Ford has been a mentor to Pietersen who knew the South African in Pietermaritzburg and calls him whenever he needs technical advice.
Meanwhile, another report in the same daily claimed Ashley Giles might step in as the stand-in coach in the West Indies.
"Assuming that [Hugh] Morris cannot reconcile England's captain and coach, the idea is gaining ground that Ashley Giles should take the team to the Caribbean as the temporary or emergency coach.
"An Ashes winner, England selector, a member of the last England team to win in the West Indies, and someone who has had a lengthy playing relationship with Pietersen, Giles has almost everything except the experience of coaching, limited as he has been to one season in charge of Warwickshire," it said.
