Andrew Strauss has officially advertised the post of managing director of the England men’s team, and says he hopes to have new coaches in time for the first Test of the home summer, against New Zealand on June 2.
Strauss, who is an advisor to the ECB Board and currently holds the post of interim managing director, led a post-Ashes clearout last month, with Ashley Giles (MD), Chris Silverwood (head coach) and Graham Thorpe (batting coach) all fired.
The process to replace them – likely with a radically different structure in place – begins in earnest on Monday with an advert for the post of MD.
This process is being run by recruiters SRI Executive and the advert cites “International and/or First Class county playing experience” as desirable. Early candidates are Alec Stewart, Ed Smith, Marcus North and Tom Moody.
It will be this individual’s responsibility to establish a coaching and selection structure in their early weeks in the job. Strauss will still have some influence, and has declared his preference for split red and white-ball coaches and an independent selector. He also stated that the ECB’s ambition is to have a coach in place for the start of the summer.
“The ambition is certainly to have the Test coach in place by that First Test of the summer,” he said. “With recruitment there are all sorts of moving pieces, including notice periods. I don’t think we can categorically say that, but it’s the ambition.
“We are making progress with it and we’re obviously very conscious there’s a ticking clock both in terms of appointing a director of cricket and then of course the coach or potentially coaches on the back of that.
“Ultimately, that will be the new DoC’s decision to make [on the coaching structure]. My perspective is that it’s time to go down that route. We have unique schedules in this country. It is very hard to plan, prepare, play and review for one coach doing all formats. There are opportunities for us to make some performance gains in that respect. But again, that’ll be up to the new DoC.”
On the role of selector, he said: “Again, you ask yourself – and I hate this phrase – what is best practice in terms of selection and player ID, and a degree of independence alongside the coaches and the captains? It certainly makes it a more robust decision-making process.”
Strauss said that senior players such as Joe Root and Eoin Morgan will be consulted.
“They will be consulted,” he said. “Absolutely, I think it’s really important for the people at the coalface to get their view across.
“But there are also a lot of other perspectives that need to be sought. I’d hate to give the message that they are going to be right in the middle of this, they have other things to focus on, but they will be consulted.”
