England’s World Cup winning coach Trevor Bayliss ended the contract with the team right after the Ashes series came to an end. While they are still in search of a new head coach, Gary Kirsten is at the top of their list of favourites for the job according to a report in The Telegraph.

Earlier, Kirsten had shown interest in coaching only the English limited overs teams. The England Director of Cricket, Ashley Giles, who was once the coach of England’s ODI side, knows about the clashes with the coaches of other formats and is now a firm believer that there should be a single head coach for all three formats. Therefore, there might be attempts made to tempt Kirsten to take charge of all three formats together.

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Gary Kirsten is a renowned coach who has been incredibly successful with the Indian and South African teams. He coached the Indian team to a World Cup victory in 2011 in the ODI format and also made them the world’s highest-ranked Test side. He had legends like Sachin Tendulkar, MS Dhoni and Rahul Dravid playing under him.

He then moved to the South African coaching job and had players like Graeme Smith, AB de Villiers and Jacques Kallis under him. He once again made the South African Test team the highest-ranked side in the world.

Now that England have put Test cricket among their top-priorities, Kirsten will surely be given a few more perks of having assistant coaches under him that may take charge while he wishes to take a break. This will also allow some inexperienced English coaches to lead the national team.

Giles will formally begin to hunt for the head-coach. If Kirsten refuses the offer, the other frontrunners for the job are supposed to be Graham Ford, Chris Silverwood and Graham Thorpe.

(With inputs from The Telegraph)