Succeeding Chris Read and playing under his father, Tom Moores on becoming his own man

NICK FRIEND: A highly regarded white-ball keeper-batsman, Moores is one of several in England's queue. Involved on a winter Lions tour prior to injury, he opens up on nepotism accusations, learning from Read and improving against the red ball

“I never really thought about it until someone mentioned it,” admits Tom Moores.

Chris Read’s retirement from first-class cricket at the end of 2017 opened a door that, through his own consistent excellence, had been nailed shut for almost two decades.

For 306 games in red-ball cricket and 397 across both limited-over formats, Read had been Nottinghamshire’s man – a calming constant as the game evolved and others came and went.

And then, it changed: the former England wicketkeeper – 1,398 dismissals later – hung up his gloves, with Moores both beneficiary and successor.

Still now only 23 years old, it has been a steep learning curve – the double-whammy of replacing an icon of county cricket, while under the watchful eye of both head coach and father.

“It never really came into my mind that I was doing that,” he says. “To me, it was just like: ‘Ready’s retiring. It’s my time. It’s my time to go.’ I was confident and chomping at the bit. I was desperate to get in, so I didn’t think: ‘Oh, I’m replacing a legend’, until somebody mentioned it to me and I actually thought of it.

“I thought of the members, I got really into these thoughts – the bowlers had been really used to bowling with Chris Read behind the stumps for their whole careers: Jake Ball, Luke Fletcher, Samit Patel. Their wicketkeeper for their whole career since they’d started until now had been Chris Read. So, then it was changing. And as a bowler to a keeper, you try to have that relationship – you just understand each other and that sort of thing. It didn’t really cross my mind until someone picked it up. And then I started thinking about it.

“Basically, I flipped it on its head. When I went into the team and I knew I was getting a chance, I didn’t want the lads or the members to notice that he was gone. I made that my job. I’m not as good as Chris Read – that’s a fact, especially towards the back end of his career because he learnt his craft as he went though. But I thought: ‘Well, if they don’t notice a drop-off and they don’t notice me, that’s a good sign.’”

Read, so highly regarded for his glovework across the circuit, has remained in the game. He worked with England’s wicketkeepers through their three-match Test series with West Indies in the bio-secure bubble and has played a significant part in Moores’ own development, continuing to assist him as a mentor.

For Moores, however, the challenge has centred on separating himself from those who came before him.

“I accepted that I’m not Chris Read,” he reflects. “I learnt a lot from him and he guided me into the role, which was really nice. But one thing I always promised myself was that I was not going to be a clone of someone. I was going to be my own person and be Tom Moores – try to learn my own keeping style and my own batting style.

“That helped me a lot because then I wasn’t comparing and I was doing my own thing. A similar thing I changed my mindset on was if I ever get the chance to play for England, you’re replacing great keepers. So, it’s something you have to be accustomed to if you get that far. If there’s a keeper in that spot with England and you ever get a chance, if you’re thinking: ‘Well, I’m replacing X, Y or Z’, you’re going to feel inadequate all the time.

“I sort of flipped it as a challenge rather than the daunting aspect of trying to fill someone’s boots who’s a legend in the game and has done so much.”

^{Tom Moores (left) pays tribute to Chris Read (right), his predecessor and mentor}

If that was one elephant in the room, the other comes in the form of Peter Moores, his father and the man in charge at Trent Bridge.

Like father like son, Moores Jnr is a fine speaker on the game; there is a disarming humility to the way he analyses the challenges he has faced since becoming a mainstay of his county side.

Cries of favouritism have been one such test, though there is an acknowledgement they come with the territory. He remembers speaking to Stuart Broad, a teammate at Nottinghamshire, for reassurance about his own experiences of having a prominent cricketing father.

Has he found it difficult? “Yes and no,” he considers. “You’re always going to get the nepotism card thrown at you,” he says with a sigh. “I’m lucky enough that I’m not the first and I won’t be the last to have cricket or sport in the family. It’s like anything – it has its pros and its cons.

“But ultimately, everyone always says if you’re in that position that the pros outweigh the negatives because the negatives normally come from background noise, which is normally quite irrelevant. Whereas, the pros are genuine pros of being in that position.

“What you strive to do as the biggest thing is trying to prove yourself in your way. As soon as Stuart Broad started coming onto the scene, doing well and going through the ranks, people then see Stuart Broad for Stuart Broad. Same for Alec Stewart. He had the ultimate, with his dad picking him for England. He fully deserved it, but then the negatives with that would be: ‘Oh, he’s dad’s pick.’ I’ve had that before. But you know that’s coming. It’s not original.”

He recalls being too young and “a bit oblivious” at the time of his father’s first stint as England coach to truly understand the pressures he was under and the scrutiny that came with the biggest job in English cricket. “But it was a tough time,” he adds. “It’s not easy as a family member. But knowing my old man, he just bounces back from anything and that’s what I saw from him.”

And as for the complexities of separating personal and professional relationships, Moores is equally philosophical. “Ultimately, it comes down to this,” he starts. “Anyone who knows the game and knows my old man, he’s got his own career and his own reputation to live up to.

“We have a working relationship; so, when I’m in the ground, it’s not necessarily father and son – it’s player and coach. I give him the respect that he’s earned in the game as a head coach. I would treat him as Peter Moores, the head coach, not as my dad.

“Likewise, he’s really good at giving me respect as an individual player like all other players in that squad. It’s never different and that’s important. We get a good balance and respect of each other’s jobs. Because, it is a job. Although we love working with each other and it never feels like a job, it is a job. He’s really good at his and I try to be good at mine.”

In a brutally competitive wicketkeeping generation, that approach has proven successful so far. Moores was one of four wicketkeepers selected on England Lions’ winter tour of Australia, alongside Kent’s Ollie Robinson and Gloucestershire’s James Bracey, before an unfortunate injury to Moores opened the door for Worcestershire keeper Ben Cox to replace him.

In addition, of course, there are those above them: Sam Billings kept wicket in England’s T20I series against New Zealand in November, while Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler and Ben Foakes sit seemingly in a three-way carousel for a Test berth – though Ollie Pope has also done the job on a makeshift basis. And then, there are others who have performed the role at county level: Tom Banton has worn the gloves in white-ball cricket for Somerset, while Moores’ Nottinghamshire teammates Ben Duckett and Joe Clarke have wicketkeeping experience, too.

^{Moores was part of the Nottinghamshire side that lost, inexplicably, in a dramatic T20 Blast semi-final}

It is a saturated, fascinating strand within English cricket at the moment. Moores admits he was “a bit disappointed” to miss out on the 55-man training squad selected by England ahead of this unusual international summer. “But I think if you ever think you’re a shoo-in for any England squad or any squad, you’re in a dangerous spot,” he adds.

He was not helped by an unfortunate injury suffered in Australia that ended his participation before it had even begun. Selected as part of the white-ball leg of that trip, he was hit in the box during a batting session with Jonathan Trott, a blow that effectively left him incapacitated for a fortnight. “At the time, all I could do was crawl up and down because I couldn’t physically stay still – it was so hot, and I was dripping with sweat. I was in absolute agony.”

The pain worsened and he was advised to rest for a period before he could afford to get hit in the same area again. He can laugh about it now, even if only through gritted teeth as he thinks back to the pain. “I literally couldn’t walk, so I was just lying in bed,” he adds, indebted to his roommate, Tom Kohler-Cadmore, who acted as a de facto waiter. “But it’s not a career-shaping thing – just a disappointing opportunity to miss out on.”

That frustration stems from an impressive one-day record and a chance lost to back it up in England colours. Nottinghamshire reached the semi-finals of both white-ball competitions in 2019, with Moores providing 218 runs at an average of 31.14 in the T20 Blast and 281 at 40.14 in the Royal London Cup – in both tournaments, he had the club’s highest strike-rate.

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A stint in the Abu Dhabi T10 League followed in the first half of the winter, where he represented Bangla Tigers alongside Liam Plunkett, David Wiese, Rilee Rossouw and Glamorgan batsman Colin Ingram, with whom he struck up a positive relationship. “He was a senior figure for me to look up to and he took me under his wing a little bit,” he says. The whole experience – he has also had a taste of the Pakistan Super League – has left him wanting more of the franchise circuit.

At one point, he found himself keeping wicket to Afghan leg-spinner Qais Ahmad, when he hurled down an 80mph bouncer at Andre Russell. “It’s just stuff like that – in domestic cricket, you don’t get that sort of thing.

“It’s a great challenge for your game and a great learning. You have to find your feet and find your rhythm – it’s a different sort of rhythm to playing domestic cricket or going on a Lions tour. It’s a different environment – you have to buy into the team but you also have to have your own game in order because, although people are there to help you, no one is there to gift anything to you on a plate. You have to know about yourself, I believe. You have to know your own game well, be confident in your own ability and take that around the world.”

In one-day cricket at least, he feels as though he has reached that point. “I guess as a player, it’s all about finding your game and finding your way around,” he explains. “In white-ball cricket, I’m pretty clear on my game and pretty clear to take it to any level and any competition. I know what I can bring.”

^{Tom Moores in action during a pre-season friendly against Leicestershire}

Against the red ball – in which Moores became a regular feature of Nottinghamshire’s side a year later than his limited-over exploits, he is still fighting against his own instincts, experimenting with what might most benefit him in the long run.

He averaged 29.33 in his first County Championship season, before suffering a significant dip to 13.88 – a fall in line with his team – as Nottinghamshire were relegated at the end of a poor 2019 campaign.

“I think I’m still working out as a young player my red-ball game,” he admits. “What sort of batter, how aggressive or counterattacking or not am I as a keeper-batter? I’m on the road to finding that.

“I think this season would have been a big year for me. I was confident going into a red-ball season this year to almost put that marker down. So far in my two years of having two full seasons of red-ball cricket, I’ve had one good year and one bad. I’m hoping to bring my red-ball game up to where my white-ball stats are.”

The same is true for the county’s collective fortunes. “The fact that we got to two semi-finals did get overshadowed a little bit by how poor our red-ball season was,” he knows.

The signings of Joe Clarke, Ben Slater, Ben Duckett and Zak Chappell had been expected to instigate a title charge, with a batting line-up full of vibrant talent and youthful exuberance. Instead, the opposite happened. There is no tangible explanation, but an unflinching commitment to rectifying what went wrong.

“Everyone has worked really hard on that,” Moores says. “We’re a new team gelling together and we’ve put a lot of work in.

“It’s just disappointing that this break came about when it did. We were really in a great spot and ready to prove what we can do; everyone was really excited to get going for the red-ball season. We were in the marquee at Trent Bridge and the competitive juices were really high.

“We’ve still got that hunger – probably double it now because of this. Everyone is desperate to get out there. It didn’t work out for us and we had a really tough year. But I back us to come out of that pretty quickly and get back on track. I can only speak for myself but it’s something that we all worked on really hard. The challenge of keeping and batting in a red-ball game really taps into my competitiveness. It really gets me going. It’s something I’ve been working on; I believe I’ve got the skills to do well in red-ball cricket. I’m still learning my game in red-ball cricket and my ways of going about it.

“That’s one of the things I’ve been brought up on as a lad – never to be satisfied and to always push to be better.”

After making runs in a belated pre-season warmup game against Leicestershire, the Bob Willis Trophy is next in his line of vision. Now very much his own man, Tom Moores – a thoughtful, engaging character – is out to show what he can do.

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