The England and Wales Cricket Board has tweaked its selection process for the men’s international squads going forward, with head coach Chris Silverwood handed the responsibility to pick players.
Ed Smith will be leaving his position at the end of this April as there will be no post of a national selector anymore in the ECB hierarchy. Ashley Giles, the managing director of England’s men’s cricket, has developed the restructuring and will be implementing it with the idea of providing greater accountability to the person in the head coach’s post, which is Silverwood currently.
Smith was appointed in his position as the head of the selection panel by the then managing director Andrew Strauss back in early 2018. The three-member panel also included Silverwood and James Taylor.
As the new structure plays itself out, there will not be a selection panel left, and Silverwood will be solely responsible for picking the national men’s squads, with inputs available to him from a number of different individuals and resources.
Taylor will no longer be a selector. Instead, the former England batter will be the head scout, who will be coordinating the work of multiple scouts that watch the domestic cricket. The scouting structure has already been in place for more than two years now and will be aiding the selection process just as performance director Mo Bobat will be doing with his feedback.
Greater responsibility has also been assigned to the coaching staff which, the ECB says, will be acting as a “resource” as well to provide “intelligence from performance analysis, talent ID, scouting, medical and sport science”. The norm of Test skipper Joe Root and white-ball captain Eoin Morgan working with Silverwood to select the final playing XIs won’t change, of course.
Giles thanked Smith for his services as the national selector in a tenure that saw England lift the 50-over World Cup trophy for the very first time.
“I would like to personally thank Ed for his contribution to the England men’s teams over the past three years,” Giles said in a statement. “The current process of selecting England teams has been in place for over 120 years.
Even though this system has its merits, with advances in technology and a greater information gathering resource at our disposal than ever before, the restructure is in the best interests of helping England men’s teams be successful. The new structure also makes lines of accountability much clearer, with Chris Silverwood, as head coach, taking ultimate responsibility for picking England senior men’s squads.”
he said.
