The biggest cheer of the day at Hove yesterday came not for another Mushtaq Ahmed wicket but the announcement that Peter Moores is to be the new England coach.

Everyone at Hove - former team-mates, the players he coached and supporters for whom he always had time to chat - are thrilled.

Moores has never forgotten his roots. Since leaving Sussex in 2005 to become ECB Academy Director he has not been as frequent a visitor to the county as he would have liked.

But he still keeps in regular contact with his successor at Hove Mark Robinson, skipper Chris Adams and the senior players. Last week at Lord's, when he was coaching MCC against Sussex, he was a frequent and welcome visitor to the away dressing room.

What will give everyone with the interests of the county at heart so much pride is the part Sussex have played in his development. For it was at Hove, and in particular the old indoor nets under the Gilligan Stand, where Moores, who had only just arrived as a player, nurtured his love of coaching 22 years ago.

He had taken his first tentative steps in 1984 when he was still with Worcestershire and spent the winter coaching pupils at a well-heeled public school in Zimbabwe.

He said: "It was a tough introduction because of the amount of coaching you had to do but a terrific grounding nonetheless."

The following winter he coached Free State Country in South Africa.

"They were not one of the strongest state sides but it was still a bit daunting for someone like me in his early Twenties and still a bit wet behind the ears," he recalled.

By then Moores had joined Sussex and began an association with the county which was to endure for two decades.

His winters would be spent in the old indoor nets under the Gilligan. Even back then, as he taught a proper forward defensive to an enthusiastic schoolboy or helped a 70-year-old club player get his eye in for the new season, he knew that he wanted to take up full-time coaching.

"The plan was to play until I was 40 and then coach, hopefully at first-class level," he said. "During those winters I was virtually full-time in the indoor school and it was a great experience. There was lots of one-to-one coaching, which I liked."

Moores had just been appointed captain when the Sussex Revolution' took place in 1997. Within a few weeks of becoming Chief Executive, Tony Pigott had made him player-coach and he retired from playing in May 1998 to succeed Des Haynes as first-team coach.

It was not long before Moores was introducing fresh thinking into the management and coaching of players who, until a few weeks earlier, had been trusted team-mates.

The days when pre-season training would consist of net sessions and endless laps of the outfield seemed like something from a sepia-tinted age as Moores was leading the squad with boyish enthusiasm around Army assault courses or on orienteering expeditions.

Moores is rightly acknowledged as one of the first to embrace new technology in his coaching methods. But in 1998 the use of lap-tops and video technology was still some way off. Instead, Moores would ask Sussex librarian Rob Boddie to pore over old Wisdens to discover which grounds favoured spin and which seam just in case it would give his side the edge in away games.

The pace of change at Hove off the field wasn't always matched on it. Former Chief Executive Dave Gilbert felt Moores and Chris Adams wielded too much power and when Sussex finished bottom of the Championship in 2001 he nearly paid with his job. But chairman Don Trangmar took a pragmatic, long-term view and Sussex cricket - and Moores himself of course - must be glad that he did.

Slowly Moores' meticulous attention to detail and enthusiasm began to get results. Sussex won four trophies in his eight seasons including their first Championship in 2003.

As his reputation in the game grew it became inevitable he would move on. In 2004 he got on a short-list of three for the job of West Indies coach. They chose Australian Bennett Dean instead but it would not be a surprise if the king-makers in Caribbean cricket are still regretting that decision today.

When Rod Marsh left as Academy Director in 2005, Moores got the job although to no one's surprise he made sure that his last season in charge of Sussex was also one of his most successful. They nearly won a second Championship and on the last day of the summer Sussex won promotion to the first division of the one-day league.

It is still a great source of pride to Moores that Robinson, a coach in a similar mould, has carried on his legacy. Every player in action yesterday, as Sussex were making such a spirited start to the defence of their title, was brought to Hove by Moores.