Stephen Fleming always seems to possess a wonderful sense of timing. It was on 12 July that England made the decision to stand down Brendon McCullum as Test head coach and, in serendipitous circumstances, on 13 July that the man they would come to anoint as his successor began his search for a new job. It was nothing more than mere coincidence that the Chennai Super Kings and Fleming mutually parted ways so soon after his former teammate's departure, but within three days he was expressing interest in the England role in a newspaper interview, and within three weeks impressing the ECB interview panel sufficiently for a hasty appointment after Andy Flower had withdrawn himself from consideration for the role.
Not that Fleming will arrive with undue hustle or hurry; Marcus Trescothick will take interim charge of the three Tests against Pakistan this summer before the 53-year-old begins a four-year deal ahead of the tour to South Africa in December. While Fleming has expressed a desire to spend time with his family, it is a curious situation that again highlights the mistake made by the ECB in not taking the opportunity for a clean break after the Ashes.
Stephen Fleming has not worked in the red-ball game as a coach (Getty)
One might term this, then, a marriage of convenience – a coach in search of a new challenge taking over a team in need of new direction. On the face of it, Fleming's credentials are modest: there is no red-ball coaching whatsoever on his CV, nor any past suggestion of a desire to turn away from a franchise T20 circuit he was perhaps the first coach to truly master. He had even turned England down in 2009, feeling it was too soon into his coaching career.
Fleming proved highly successful with Chennai Super Kings in the IPL (Getty)

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