Moody

SYDNEY (Reuters):

WESTERN AUSTRALIA will not continue their bid to recruit Sri Lanka coach Tom Moody until after the Cricket World Cup, the Australian state said in a statement on its website yesterday.

Moody has been strongly linked with a return to his home country and Western Australia are looking for a new coach.

"Since Wayne Clark announced his retirement at the beginning of this year the WACA has made it clear Tom is the preferred candidate to take over as state coach," the Western Australian Cricket Association (WACA) statement said.

"However, no agreement has been reached with him at this point in time. The WACA respects that Tom has an important task over the next month as he leads Sri Lanka towards the climax of the World Cup in the West Indies.

"As such, the WACA will not be progressing its discussions with him until such time as his commitments at the World Cup have concluded."

Moody has also been linked with the England coaching job if Duncan Fletcher leaves the position after the World Cup.

"There has been speculation about this, that and the other but at the end of the day I haven't looked at anything," Moody told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"I said to WA that at the end of the World Cup I will sit down with Sri Lanka and see what the future holds there."

Moody, 41, spent the majority of his 15-year playing career with Western Australia and English county Worcestershire, where his family still lives.

He played eight Tests and 76 one-day internationals for Australia, helping them win the 1987 and 1999 World Cups, and coached Worcestershire before getting the Sri Lanka job in 2005.