Stewart steps down from Surrey as Key says Flintoff may lead England one day
Alec Stewart, Surrey’s director of cricket, is to step down after 11 years in the role. The 60-year-old, who has overseen three County Championship titles, will leave at the end of the year.
“This has been the toughest decision of my working career,” said Stewart (below), whose association with Surrey stretches back to youth cricket before he signed his first professional contract in 1981.
“I am incredibly proud of what has been achieved over the last 11 years, winning trophies as well as continuing to produce our own players through the talent pathway and providing players for England. “The main reason for informing the club at this point in time is to give them enough notice to find a suitable replacement. The job is not one that you can just leave at the ground, as it demands 24-7 attention.
“As people may know, my wife has been battling cancer since 2013 and I want to give her, and my family, more of my time over the coming years than this job allows.” Surrey chairman Oli Slipper hopes to still be able to tap into Stewart’s extensive experience. “Whilst he is stepping down from his role at the club, we do not want to lose his knowledge of the game and I have no doubt that his successor will always have a helpful voice to call upon if needed,” he said.
As a player, Stewart racked up 133 Tests and 170 one-day internationals for England, scoring more
than 13,000 runs across the two formats with 19 centuries, and a further 314 first-class and 334 List A games for Surrey.
Andrew Flintoff has been tipped as a future England head coach by director of men’s cricket Rob Key. Key has been integral in offering the 2005 Ashes hero a path back from showbusiness to elite sport after the former England captain suffered serious facial injuries in a car crash while filming Top Gear.
Flintoff accepted his friend’s invitation to anonymously attend games at last year’s Ashes series and has since accepted mentoring roles with England’s white-ball side as well as England Lions and Under-19s.
He will lead Northern Superchargers
in the Hundred this summer and has been inked in to assist Matthew Mott at the T20 World Cup in June.
With fans and players alike welcoming the return of one of the country’s most popular figures of recent times, he is already being spoken about as a possible successor and Key can see why.
“Without question, I think he would be an excellent head coach,” Key told the Daily Telegraph. “He will be a worthy candidate going forward. When that time comes and whoever is in this job, and it might be outside of my time, they would be stupid not to look at him.
“For all the things he has done, cricket is always the thing he goes back to. Like all of us, it is the thing we know better than anything else and the thing we love.
“It is almost like he has no choice. It is what he thinks about the most after his family.”
Key praised Flintoff’s ability to understand the highs and lows of international cricket and sees him as a natural working with the current crop.
“Flintoff is a leader like [Ben] Stokes. He is not going to need to learn leadership qualities,” said Key. “He has those in abundance, which is what you need at the top level. He has that empathy that Stokes has as well as being a great player.
“He knows what it is like to nick off and to struggle. All these things as a leader, your interactions with people, mean you can impact people in a positive or negative way with everything you do. Fred is aware of that, and not many are aware of that, and he understands how to use that gift with people.”