WELLINGTON - Since his retirement from international cricket last year, former New Zealand skipper Stephen Fleming has rejected two plum-coaching offers, one believed to be England.

Stuff.co.nz quoted Fleming as saying that two of cricket’s leading nations had approached him to take over as coach - one a year ago, one in recent months - but he had turned both down.

“I was flattered to be offered, and I spent a lot of time looking at both teams,” Fleming said.

“They had really good opportunities in world tournaments…I stayed true to my plan of being out of the game. It came down to the fact it wasn’t my time and I was trying to force the decisions. It really did interest me,” he added.

Although Fleming refused to name the teams, but one was likely to be England, which 12 months ago replaced its coach, Peter Moores, with former Zimbabwe batsman Andy Flower.

Fleming says a coaching career could be five years away yet.

“As a past player, you are not automatically qualified to become a coach. I’m very aware of that. Part of my development with Chennai [the IPL team he coaches eight weeks a year] is to understand my shortcomings as a coach and see the changes I need to make.

“If I get another couple of years, I can see if it is what I want to do and if I would be any good at it,” he said.

In his frank interview, Fleming revealed why he retired from test cricket after losing the captaincy. He admitted that he had wanted to captain the team for one more series, and may even have stayed on for another summer as a player if he hadn’t been dumped.

Contradicting former selection convener Sir Richard Hadlee’s version of those events, he said while he understood why he was dropped as captain, he felt the process was “messy and wrong”. (ANI)