The Guardian's take:
The future of English cricket, it transpires, looks remarkably like its past, only a little greyer around the temples. And so those of us who have followed this story through all its improbable twists and turns, who kept faith through the all the questionable selections, the decisions to cut Kevin Pietersen, keep Alastair Cook as captain, and create a job especially to accommodate Andy Flower, have finally arrived at the last great reveal. And we can't help but ask 'Really? This is how it ends?' The man the ECB have turned to is the very same one who was found wanting five years ago, when, again, he was appointed in the wake of a 5-0 Ashes defeat.
It is an extraordinary decision, and one that will inspire precious little hope among the already exasperated fans. Those who pay to watch the team play can be forgiven for feeling that they can't suspend their disbelief any longer. "We might have to take a little more pain before we have sustained success again," said Flower this winter, "and we might have to ask for a little patience in that regard over the coming months." It is a luxury they have little right to expect now they have sacked their best batsman and re-hired their former coach. The World Cup starts in 10 months, the Ashes in a little over a year. Previously, patience with Moores lasted 20 months. He will have less than that this time around.
Moores is, Michael Vaughan wrote on Saturday, "brilliant at talking and delivering presentations". So he must be, to have convincingly explained away his international record. Under Moores, England lost more often than they won. In 68 matches across all three formats, they won 27 and lost 29. The last six of those defeats came in the space of seven matches during a tour to India at the end of a year that Wisden described as "a poor one for an England team hoping to show tangible signs of real progress towards becoming a consistently competitive side", in which "not one single player made significant progress."
In Test matches, Moores' team won three series out of seven, and only eight matches out of 22, all but one of those victories against New Zealand and the West Indies. Against India, Sri Lanka, and South Africa, England won one, lost five, and drew six. Their performance in Sri Lanka in 2007-08, Wisden noted, "filled their followers with despair" over the "fallible batting", "unclever bowling" and "lack of game toughness". They were second in the Test rankings when Moores took over, and fifth by the time he was fired.
"The leading English coach of his generation" as ECB managing director Paul Downton called him, was also, to be blunt, the most unsuccessful coach of the three England have had in the modern era.
Downton's description seems even stranger when you consider that, estimable as Moores' domestic record is, it is still outstripped by those of the two other county coaches on the ECB shortlist. Moores has won the Championship twice, once with Sussex, once with Lancashire. The latter was the club's first in 77 years. The length of their wait made his achievement all the more conspicuous. They were also, it should be noted, relegated in the very next season. Mick Newell has also won two Championship titles, with Nottinghamshire, as has Moores' successor at Sussex, Mark Robinson. Newell has also won the YB40, while Robinson has also won two Pro40 titles and the T20 Trophy.
Moores is affable, diligent, and dignified. After he was sacked there was a consensus that he was an excellent county coach who couldn't make the step up. He failed because he was, aptly enough, a victim of the Peter Principle. He had done a good job with the England Academy and the Lions side, and so was automatically promoted to the top job when it became vacant. "The ECB has developed a contingency and succession plan for all key management positions," said chief executive David Collier at the time. "Peter has been identified for some time as a leading candidate as a future England head coach."
Mike Brearley suggested that the "selection smacks of favouritism". This time the ECB has at least conducted interviews, but there is, again, a whiff of partiality about the appointment. Moores will be happy to work alongside Flower, who is now technical director of elite coaching, and is the last man to start pushing for Pietersen's recall. He has come up inside the system, and will reaffirm the ECB's thinking rather than challenge it.
Downton says that in the five years Moores has been working at Lancashire, he has accumulated "a great deal more experience and understanding of the challenges that the role presents", and it is true that the fact he has tried, and failed, once before will give him a rare opportunity to put right what he got wrong.
In his book, Driving Ambition, Andrew Strauss wrote that the biggest mistake Moores made was failing to realise that "international cricket differs from county cricket in the sense that the players need far less pushing and prodding … Every time they go out there to play, they are playing for their careers. They are bound to be up for it. What is required at the highest level is a coach who is able to calm players down."
Well, in an interview with Don McRae in 2011 Moores explained "There are things I would do differently if I had another chance – but there's more I would do the same … I wouldn't change the general concept I brought to England." And judging by his press conference, he hasn't lost his habit of calling a spade an excavation facilitation tool. So, if he hasn't changed, then we must hope England have, and that he will be working with younger players who have more to prove at a time when they will be inclined to adapt to his methods.
There is hope. Moores has an excellent relationship with Cook, which runs right back to the captain's time at the academy. "Peter's style of coaching was designed to cater more for an individual's needs, and to ensure every young player realised he was responsible for his own career," Cook wrote in his own book, Starting Out, in 2008. "To me he was an outstanding candidate to step into such big shoes. I had worked with Peter a lot at the academy and his track record, both with the second string and before that at Sussex, was unbelievably good. He is incredibly enthusiastic and leaves nothing to chance and it seemed like a natural progression that he should be promoted."
"Not only was Peter Moores the right man for the job," wrote Cook in 2008, "but he was a product of our system, proof that it worked." And ultimately proof, in fact, that it didn't. Still, that was then. Together, Cook and Moores may build a hungry, hard-working team, characterised by its attention to detail in practice, its excellent "ethic and philosophy", and its unstinting engagement on the field. But in the meantime they must excuse the scepticism. It is, in the circumstances, understandable.