suggests

New Zealander Stephen Fleming, England’s new Test coach, has suggested the national team should be led by someone from England.

Fleming, who will take charge of his first series in South Africa in December, is the latest overseas coach to lead the England men’s team.

Since 1999, only two Englishmen – Peter Moores (twice) and Chris Silverwood – have been in charge of the Test side, while Ashley Giles had a spell as white-ball coach.

In the same time period England have been led by two Zimbabweans, in Duncan Fletcher and Andy Flower, and Australian Trevor Bayliss – while Fleming has succeeded his fellow Kiwi Brendon McCullum, who remains white-ball coach. Another Australian, Matthew Mott, also had time in charge of the white-ball team.

Fleming’s backroom team, announced last week, is heavily weighted towards homegrown coaches.

Former England opener Marcus Trescothick, who was in interim charge of the Test team earlier this year, is joined by ex-England wicketkeeper James Foster and former spinner Richard Dawson.

Jonathan Trott, an Ashes winner with England, is about to begin a spell in charge of England Lions. Both Trott and Dawson were in the running for the Test job before Fleming was appointed.

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, former New Zealand captain Fleming said it will be a “priority” of his tenure to help develop English coaches.

“I do believe that primarily the national team should be coached by a national representative,” said Fleming.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity, but there will be some development in terms of the coaching, and you can see by our staff.”

As well as Fleming and McCullum filling the head coach roles for the men’s national teams, England’s selector, Marcus North, is Australian.

In September it was announced that another Australian, Leah Poulton, will become the managing director of England women. Between 2020 and 2023 England women’s head coach was Lisa Keightley, the former Australia international.

In addition to developing the coaches on his own staff, Fleming said he will also occasionally invite county coaches and former England players into the set-up.

“There are some really key people who have come back into the system and I’m really pleased about that,” he said.

“I look forward to working with them, but it is a real focus and it’s an ambition as well that you will also get county coaches who will be introduced at certain times and you will get past players that will be asked to come back as well.

“It’s really inclusive and a comfortable nature of using what’s around, but also driving what should be driven within the county game and the English game.”

The US president has long been unhappy with inside information about his administration being leaked to the media.

United States President Donald Trump has suggested that those who leak information to the news media should be shot as punishment.

Trump made the remarks at a campaign rally in Bullhead City, Arizona, as he urged supporters to vote in the November 3 midterm elections.

“In my opinion, leakers should be shot,” Trump told the crowd. “In the old days, we used to shoot leakers, you know, when they leak what time you’re going to attack a country.”

Trump made the statement in an apparent reference to Operation Midnight Hammer, which saw the US launch a surprise attack on Iran in June 2025 during the 12-day war between Israel and Iran.

In the aftermath of the attack, several media outlets published findings from a preliminary report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

That report – which had not yet been released to the public – indicated that Iran was able to move some of its enriched uranium away from the sites the US had bombed.

It also suggested that the extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities was more modest than what Trump had asserted.

Trump, however, appeared to signal that the timing of the US attacks was among the leaked information. He accused the news media of putting military members in danger, calling out The New York Times and CNN in particular.

“They leaked the time we were leaving, the time we were arriving,” Trump said, claiming he had to reschedule the bombing campaign two days later as a result.

“Somebody leaked. Some sleaze-bag, they ought to go to jail or be shot. For the rest of their life, they should be in jail.”

Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with the news media, and he has previously called for harsh punishment against any official who passes on confidential information to news outlets.

After parts of the Defense Intelligence Agency report became public, he blamed lawmakers in the Democratic Party for its release.

“The Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran,” Trump wrote on social media at the time. “They should be prosecuted!”

Under Trump, the White House has taken aggressive action to track down the source of leaks.

Staff in his administration, as well as officers in the military, have also been asked to take polygraph tests.

Journalists at several news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, have also received subpoenas aimed at determining the sources of internal information made public.

The newspapers had reported on stories such as a botched Navy SEALs raid in North Korea and how Trump ignored internal Pentagon warnings against launching the Iran war.

Last year, the Department of Defense demanded that journalists who wished to access the Pentagon sign an agreement not to publish unauthorised material.

Much of the Pentagon press corps refused to agree, and a federal court struck down many of the new demands made on journalists at the department.

Trump has long raged against leakers, going back to his first term as president from 2017 to 2021.

Former White House official Alyssa Farah Griffin told a podcast in 2024 that Trump had called for leakers to be executed, after media outlets reported that he had taken shelter in a White House bunker during racial justice protests in 2020.

Trump appeared to reprise that sentiment in his speech to Arizona voters on Wednesday, less than three weeks before the November 3 midterms.

“Leakers should be dealt with very, very strongly,” Trump said. “To me, they are the scum of the earth.”