Lehmann for England?

Former Australian batsman Darren Lehmann has emerged as a surprise candidate to take over England’s coaching reigns from Duncan Fletcher, should the opportunity arise.

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph, Lehmann said, “It’s something I’d love to do. If the opportunity came up to coach England, I’d certainly want to do it. To be perfectly honest, you never say never, do you? I know the England players quite well. At the moment, I’ve got a lot of things on and I’m still playing cricket, which makes it difficult to coach anyone. But I’ve always had coaching ambitions. I’d like to think I know the game well enough and I can work with players well enough. If you can do that, you can do some coaching at various levels. I can’t imagine a better stage than to do it at an international level.”

Rumours doing the rounds suggest that Darren Gough had sounded close mate Lehmann out courtesy of the ECB, but “Boof” as he is known, was non-comittal, saying, “That’s between Goughie and I. If it hasn’t happened it hasn’t, if it has, it has. Although I have played a lot of cricket with Darren and he knows what’s going on in English cricket.”

Lehmann, whose connections with English cricket stem from his seven years at Yorkshire, is currently president of the Australian Cricketers Association.