Test Match Special - Flazball incoming? Fleming set to be Test head coach

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

Daniel Norcross is alongside Ashes-winning bowler Steven Finn and former England Test opener Michael Carberry to discuss the prospect of Stephen Fleming becoming the next England Test head coach.Finny & Carbs wonder what he needs to fix with England, and Jamie Overton, who played under Fleming at Chennai Super Kings, tells Daniel Norcross about playing under him.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. A vicious gang of hackers causing chaos for businesses, councils and hospitals. What if I don't finish this treatment and this cancer grows? But they didn't care. I'm dying laughing. Making outrageous demands for money. They wanted millions. It was high tech and high stakes.

The country's under attack. And it was highly secretive until someone exposed it all. Hapak, Season 4, The Conti Files. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You're listening to the TMS podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live. It's been reported in the telegraph, and it's been verified by Stefan Schemel that there are facts that can be reported. There is no contract yet signed, but a new coach is lined up. And...

Array. Yes, hooray. Array and it's it's another Kiwi we've got a big Kiwi loving going on at the moment and it's Stephen Fleming we believe is going to be the new coach for England as I say the contract hasn't been signed yet it's been reported that he would take the role from the South Africa test series so this is to be the test coach so not for the Pakistan series so there'd have to be an interim coach for that you don't know who that would be but could well be Marcus dress got it this is already part of the setup no announcement about an interim cap I suppose Stephen Fleming would want to choose his own captain. Let's I guess start with that. One of the first things that occurs to me, not necessarily for the captaincy, but there's a player who's not playing today,

who is captain of My London, Sam Curran, who has been coached by Stephen Fleming, and there is a big gaping hole in the scene bowling all-round department. Sam Curran's been playing quite a bit of red ball cricket. Do coaches when they come in, do they even think in those terms, you know, because he'll have developed a round to rap or with him.

I know it's in T20 cricket, but might that be a little pointer as to the sorts of players he might be interested in? Well, I think it will count relationships and relationships with the coach are vitally important for captains. So yeah, absolutely it might come into his thinking, but I'd be surprised if that was the sole reason that someone was picked in a test match team. In fact, I'd be aghast if someone was picked in a test match team just for that. So yeah, there are a number of different criteria that you would have to fit him, but clearly,

When you are a new coach, you have to come in with a vision and a plan and you'd hope that if it is going to be for the South Africa series, that Stephen Fleming would have that sewn up by them. Those of you know him, what sort of a character is he? He's going to be different. Everyone's different. He's going to be different from Brendan McCullum, you'd imagine. Carbs, what do you know of Stephen Fleming, the man? Very little, be honest. I think I played against him very young in my career. But obviously, watched from afar. He's a very successful franchise coach. He was a great captain for New Zealand. I suppose one of those kind of very under the radar sort of people,

sort of coaches, I should say, even with all the success, he's brought to Chennai over the years. He's not someone that you sort of hear in the press very much. So someone that obviously likes to be kind of in the background, but obviously there's a deep respect for him. and he was known for his, you know, for being a very good tactical leader on the pitch. So I agree with something Finney just said there. What I want to see really whoever's the test coach, if it is Stephen Fleming or A and other, is a plan.

And I think that's the thing that's just been lacking over the last, certainly over the last six months, but certainly during the ashes is that we lacked a plan when Bazball didn't work, which I said early from very early it was never a sustainable way of playing the game but anyway takes people to get punched in the face a few times to realise that but you know

what's the plan going forward? What is a sustainable plan so that youngsters in county cricket are not feeling like they have to go out and smash it at 13 and over against the new Duke's ball they can dare I say play some just solid basic cricket do you think though because just

I mentioned county cricket there. Finney, how much do you think Stephen Foaming knows about the English cricket scene? Are you happy with another overseas coach rather than say a coach who is enmeshed already within a county, for example? Yes, because I think you want the best qualified person for the job, and I haven't written the job description. It's going to be the top bods at the ECB who have decided exactly what they want from this. head coach and the criteria that they need to fill. And I think that the scouting network and the network of relationships within domestic cricket allow you to allow yourself to become entwined into

that itself. Stephen Fleming clearly has a respect for domestic cricket. He played for Nottingham Shear. I think he coached the Southern Brave in the first few hundreds as well. So he's not unfamiliar with domestic cricket. He probably will take some getting up to speak. with the new younger players that are coming through. And he will give himself time to do that. I can't imagine he's going to be the kind of person. He doesn't strike me as the kind of person. I have never encountered.

He's one of the few people actually. Usually you've come across people somewhere in your career. Not once have I crossed paths with Stephen Fleming. Apart from my breakfast with him one morning in Birmingham before I was working on a New Zealand versus England game. But he strikes me as someone who would be well thought out, thought out, well planned. I don't think you hold the job at Chennai Super Kings for 17 years or whatever he did

without being well thought out, well planned and a measured person. And well prepared. And I think that one of the things that he will allow himself to do by coming in for the South Africa series and not the Pakistan series is to be able to give himself time to take a view about the stuff that he has at his disposal and then make best use of it. I'll just jump in there quickly. I think that's a very smart decision on his front to actually not dive in straight away and actually give himself that time to just oversee what's gone on, start to formulate,

start to understand who he wants as his lieutenants, if you like, who his captain is going to be, you know, reach out to senior players and get an understanding, again, of this buzzword, the brand of cricket they want to play and what he wants to impart on the team. I think from that perspective already he's shown that he's quite a deep thinker. Also, it feels a bit on brand with what the ECB might need at the moment. So he's a massive figure in New Zealand cricket, captained them umpteen times. You know, it's almost sort of Graham Smith levels of captains. He was at it for years and years and years.

Very well respected player. Totally different kind of player as well from Brendan McCollum, wasn't he? I mean, he was a bit more measured in the way he went about things, whether that'll translate into how he coaches a modern test team, I don't know. Is it also a bit of a coup for the ECB that they've got somebody who's been doing all this franchise coaching? He's been not just with Chennai Super Kings, but with various offshoot of the Super Kings franchise, hasn't he? And there was a lot of talk about, well, why would anybody want to be the coach of England when you can go and do seven weeks at the IPL, a few weeks of a big bash?

I mean, they have found someone. Well, yeah. Well, clearly they have found someone. But who actually, you know, is making a load of money out of franchise cricket? Yeah, well, we don't know the circumstances about what he lost is. Whether he'll keep doing it? CSK role or whether sometimes you just want a different plan. Don't you want you want to experience something new?

And he seems to me to be someone who is quite worldly and quite well-rounded. When I've read or listened to him speak before, he seems calm, undepressed. Again, I don't think you hold one of those roles in a big IPL franchise for that long without being calm under pressure and being able to deal with different people from above coming at you without dealing with the relationship with national boards about the availability of players as well, which there's going to be that confliction between the white ball head coach and the test head coach about who gets their players and when. There's a World Cup next year, but there's also in Ashes. There's a lot happening. There's a lot happening. And that might come into his decision when he decides who he wants to be captain of the test match team. There are lots and lots of questions that he will have to answer. And that will be in a collaborative way. I think clearly it will help that he will have an existing relationship with Brendan McCollum. Not that I think that McCollum couldn't work with anyone because I think he's a very amiable man and he will be respectful of the person, whoever it is that takes that head coach. But the fact they would have. have a good initial relationship, I think, helps that too. Well, Fleming will know Brenda McCullum very well, won't he? So that you would imagine.

You would have a captain do at some point, older thought. So you'd imagine that could be helpful. Just trying to think in terms of other ways in which this might shake things up a little bit. Because obviously people have developed relationships with Brendan McCollum, and Harry Brooke was absolutely not nailed on certainty to be the England test captain. Far from it, because we've been talking about it quite a bit lately, but it felt like that's who they had lined up.

Do you think this means that you start all over again? We just don't know. Whereas under Brenda McCullum, if after Ben Sokes' retirement, Brendan McCollum was still coach, you would have thought, right, that's just a simple handing over the baton to Harry Brooke. Now, does it not feel like that? Well, I mean, I think that's the whole point of having this, if you like, reset, is that it's got to be just that.

I think you're not looking for the same relationship with, if it is to be Harry Brooke and the new coach coming in, you do want that new relationship to some degree because you want that new coach to put a, his own spin on things, but also, you know, there was clearly, you know, things going on that wasn't to the benefit of English cricket. it whilst Brenner-Cullin was, you know, it's not an elephant in the room, it's what was going on. So I would like to think that Stephen Fleming coming in, if it is to be Harry Brooke as captain,

there would be a different relationship. There'll be some, maybe some tough conversations that maybe need to be had with Harry Brooke to say, well, look, this is this is the standard as I expect and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah going forward. And Harry Brooke would have the opportunity to also put his case forward of what he what he wants as a captain. He's got to, you know, he's got to work together. He's not, it can't be a kind of communism. It's got to, you know, you got to find the middle ground. And I think, but.

In your experience, is that relationship something that, you know, coach and captain or I guess what I'm trying to drive out is, how important is it that the coach gets his choice of captain? Very important. I don't think you can have a captain in post. upon you. So director of cricket wouldn't like go, right, we want Harry Brooke to be captain. Sorry Stephen, your coach, whoever you may want, doesn't matter. They might do. They might do. I don't think that's the right way to go about it,

but they might well have said that and Fleming might have gone, yes, that's fine. But I think that connection and the synergy between the captain and coach is what makes everything tick. It's how you drive a true message home is when you are both completely entwined about the way you want your team to go forward. And the fascinating thing for me now is what kind of cricket does Stephen Fleming want to play? And that would have been a big question in the job interview, I'm sure. One of the questions would have been, how do you envisage your team playing? How do you want them to go about winning games of test match cricket? What would the balance of your team look like? And who would be the

key players for you to achieve what you want to? Those would have been very important questions. that would have had to be answered throughout the interview process. And it's another exciting chapter in the melodrama that is English cricket. It marches on, doesn't it? Well, it does, but another part of it is that it suggests to me that if they've appointed or about to appoint a captain, then you know, a lot of people would be going, well, what's the situation with Rob Key? Is he still going to keep his job well? I think we'll be seeing an interim captain in this Pakistan series.

An interim captain. I'd be staggered if we don't see a interim coach and interim captain and everything is on pause until South Africa. Right and do you think that might also be true of the people at the top of English cricket or you don't see any change taking place there? I'm talking here about Key and the two Richards. I think that's hard to judge. I think it's surprising that all of those guys have escaped the highest level of scrutiny throughout all of this but yeah there needs to be some stability somewhere you can't really the entire organisation.

Well they did it off to 20. Well they did it off to 20. It's only 13-14, didn't they? Yes, yeah, they did. Or we're going back to 1989 ashes where they use 35 players or five captains. Right, just one thing that I have discovered is that these two don't know Stephen Fleming as well as of me. He made me a very good cup of tea once.

I think it was at Durham when we had him on commentary. He's a thoroughly affable man. Well, it's no wonder he's got the job there. Yeah, I put it in a word for his tea. It's just the right level of strength. The TMS podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live. He was with us. A vicious gang of hackers causing chaos.

for businesses, councils and hospitals. What if I don't finish this treatment and his cancer grows? But they didn't care. I'm dying laughing. Making outrageous demands for money. They wanted millions. It was high tech and high stakes. The country's under attack.

And it was highly secretive until someone exposed it all. Cyberhack, season four, The Conti Files. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. So Michael Carberry, what are the things that England need to fix? That's a very good question. I'll do my best. Well, I think the obvious one, they've got to get some stability. I think that's what's been lacking over the last few weeks.

A lot of uncertainty, you know, the retirement of the sudden retirement of Ben Stokes. Brendan McCullum obviously moved on as a test coach as well. So I think going forward, one thing is. and we'll be looking for now is just to gain some stability in the amongst the group get a get a coaching which they've done in well it seems Stephen fleming is going to be the man still don't know who the captain is who's going to be nailed on for that but um i guess that would be the next phase to know who's going to lead the team into the next era and you would think the ashes is coming up he's going to be you know you're looking really forward forward planning for that as well and also you

what's going to be the style of English cricket? Because obviously we've seen in the last couple of years under Brendan and Cullum a very sort of, if you like, unique way of playing the game. It lasted for a sort of 15 game segment. But then, you know, it sort of all unraveled this winter. It unraveled in India. And, you know, it's caused it being polarised

polarising amongst fans and supporters and former players. so it'll be interesting now to try and see what the new coach coming in, what his style he wants to impart on the team going forward. How hard is it going to be to get that stability with mixed coaching roles? Because we both played in an era the first time that the coaching roles were split with Andy Flower and Ashley Giles and we both played in both those teams, the white ball and the red ball teams. How much of a challenge is that going to be with Anash's next year and the World Cup coming after? after? I think it was, I think it can be deeply challenging because again in our era we had,

as you's rightly said, we had Andy Flower doing the test matches, Ashley Giles, doing the ODIs and two completely different characters. I think it would be much the same now with Stephen Fleming coming in and Brendan McCollum being the outgoing test captain but now the ODI coach and again two guys who play the game very, very, very different ways. So I think it's going to be a very interesting time for any England player, budding England player coming in as to trying to, I suppose, integrate the style of play that that coach wants to go with. What do you think the style of play the team needs is to win those big series?

Because that is the big criticism of what we've seen over the last four years is that the cricket was so entertaining. It was fascinating to watch, but in the big moments, in the big series, series they didn't quite get over the line what needs to change in order for them to do them so it's funny i like i like the attacking style of of cricket as you know i like i like to watch england play well and and and batters come out and attack of course but i would like to see as i've been saying for years i'd like to see that that bit of smarts it's it's you there's times as you know that we you can go on the attack but sport isn't an all-out-attack game you know

there's times where you have to be, where you can't win, you've got to be hard to beat. All right? And that's also, you're trying to create legacy as a test team. You know that better than anybody. You played in the England team when they were on that pursuit to world's number one. And you didn't win every test match. But what you were were a core group of players. And I was outside of that, as you know, of a team that was very hard to beat, home and away.

And that's, for me, got to be somewhat of a target for England teams. you know, how can we go away to India and win? How can we go to South Africa, Australia? You know, places where it's not common for England team or anybody to go there and win, how can this England team be a team for all conditions rather than playing, you know, the needle being too far across the other way of,

oh, it's all about entertainment. Yes, you're trying to entertain, but I think what's our job as professionals is? is trying to win games of cricket. And that can take many, many different guises. And sometimes you have to tough it out. You know, as a bowler, you know, it would be lovely to, you know, pitch it up, full up the stumps all the time. But you know when a batsman gets in, you've got to think slightly more defensive.

You've got to keep skinning the game. You've got to keep on top of him in a different way. And I'd just like to see that, you know, that little bit of common sense smarts come back into English cricket. And the captaincy element of this as well. Harry Brooke is probably the frontrunner to be the captain across all three formats. How tenable is that, do you think, both with the amount of cricket that's played and also for him to be able to give absolutely everything to all three of those roles? I mean, for me, that is one of the hardest decisions. I think the new coach, the hierarchy of got to make is factoring in.

everything you've just said there it's not just the job itself but it's you know how many he's captain for all formats and that's very very tough in the modern day calendar where you are you are basically you're going to get a break you don't want to

look you don't want someone like Harry Brooke to lose form because he's still a fantastic batsman you don't want him to lose his form as a batter through fatigue having so many things to factor in so maybe I don't know what's the conversations that are going on at the moment,

but maybe they'll be looking at someone who is probably exclusively just a test player, which then narrows down the options even far. I think that's the worry at the moment. We don't have two or three nailed on options. I'm taking Joe Rue out of this equation because he's obviously had a go and, you know, he's at an older age now. But, you know, of someone in that age bracket, Harry Brooke is in, to lead this team forward.

I think that's the worry for me. We just don't have the candidate ready. The TMS podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live. Jamie Overton's with me being reported in the telegraph that Stephen Fleming's going to be the next England test coach for the South Africa series. So you've been coached by Stephen Fleming. Can you give us kind of insight into the sort of style of coach he'll be?

Very relaxed. Not let the players do what they want, but he will have repercussions. if the lads aren't doing the right things. He got a little bit frustrated in India with guys just trying to whack the ball out of the net. He wants to play the right sort of cricket. And I think it will be very tactical

in those sorts of side of things. But yeah, he's a great guy. He's very relaxed, very calm and very composed. And if he does get the job, he'll be great for it. When he attempts to come back, play a bit of Red Ball cricket? Not at the moment. I feel my body's in a good spot. Obviously, I've had not a great summer

with coming back from India early with a quad tear and a bit of issues in my shoulder. But it feels like I'm sort of over that now and shoulders getting better each day. But yeah, I feel like trying to bowl 25 overs, 20 overs in a day is probably not quite ready for that at the moment. The TMS podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live. Five Live Sports. So here's the first ball of this series. All the cricket you laugh. Lips on BBC sounds.

Smash straight back down the ground. This girl. All the coverage of the biggest competitions on the domestic and international circuits. It's a ball cricket and it's the huge one. Creeket on Five Life Sport. Oh, I'm living every ball of this. Listen on BBC Sound. A vicious gang of hackers causing chaos for businesses, councils and hospitals.

What if I don't finish this treatment and his cancer grows? But they didn't care. I'm dying laughing. making outrageous demands for money. They wanted millions. It was high tech and high stakes. The country is under attack. And it was highly secretive until someone exposed it all.

Cyberhack, season four, The Conti Files. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.