Who will get the top job at the ECB?

Speculation is reaching fever pitch around English cricket as to who will succeed Hugh Morris as the managing director of the England team. Here's a guide to the likely candidates.

While Nasser Hussain maybe the frontrunner, former Essex team-mate RONNIE IRANI has also thrown his hat into the ring, missed, but kept on giving 110% until he got it more or less in the ring or thereabouts anyway. It is believed that Irani will stress his ability to involve players and crowd alike in keep-fit exercises, while also doing an opinionated but humorous radio show with Alan Brazil about major cricketing issues facing the ECB.

Also well-known for his radio work is Darren Gough, who has advanced the possibility of a joint candidacy with ANDREW CADDICK. Gough believes the cat-and-dog chemistry that allowed them to take so many wickets as an opening pair could provide what he, in a press release, called "the essential creative tension and inherent dichotomy of disparate personalities unified in one purpose that engendered such rare alchemy in our halcyon days with leather in hand". It is thought that Gough may be on an earner with the Yorkshire University Press to promote sales of dictionaries, but this would not necessarily compromise his application.

SIR IAN BOTHAM, who has already delivered well-thought-out and nuanced assessments of the problems facing English cricket in The Botham Report and It Was Better When I Was Playing, is understood to favour a more attacking management structure to the ECB. "Can somebody explain to me why they haven't got a managing director in here, here, here and here, as well as two CEOs and a CFO in there, and a pair of chairmen in there?" commented the common-sense advocating cricketing knight.

NICK KNIGHT meanwhile, launched an aggressive, trenchant campaign for the top job, saying: "Oooh, on the one hand, perhaps I will apply, but you know, if you put it another way, perhaps in a very real sense I will not, if you like, if you know what I am saying. Oooh."

With Andrew Strauss having removed himself from the running, cricket may have to settle for the marginally less posh PRINCE WILLIAM, who is available after giving up his demanding job of being slightly in the armed forces. However, many believe that Strauss' understanding of what makes South African players tick will be even harder to replace than his knowledge of which fork to use under pressure. As such, current players are understood to be hoping that former South African rugby favourite BAKKIES BOTHA or possibly SOME BLOKE WHO WORKS IN A PUB IN EARL'S COURT can speak to them in their own language.

A popular choice with the British public would be TELEVISION'S FREDDIE FLINTOFF, but the hero of 2005 has publicly stated that he would rather work on his media career, including forthcoming reality series Celebrity Poodle-Refurbishing With Jenny Éclair And Joe Pasquale, rather than help to shape the game that made him famous.

With former international leadership experience considered a strong plus, there has been a groundswell of support among his friends and relations within the game for CHRIS COWDREY but a more realistic choice might be MIKE GATTING, who has said that he is "ready, willing and able to endure some really serious lunches if that's what it takes".

If the search does not throw up a suitable candidate, GILO has declared himself "ready to get stuck in if that's what's asked of me."