Much was said about a reset of England’s red-ball cricket on the tour of the Caribbean, but no genuine change was ever possible until the team landed home this morning.
The Windies series was always between eras and, in so many ways, another defeat has only added to England’s issues, with Joe Root’s grip on the captaincy never so weak.
On the men’s side, the ECB need a director of cricket, a head coach, a batting coach and a national selector. More broadly, the governing body need a new chair right now and will need a new chief executive later in the year, when Tom Harrison moves on.
Those who lost their jobs after the Ashes are already primed for new roles: Graham Thorpe was announced as Afghanistan’s head coach yesterday and Chris Silverwood has been in advanced talks with Sri Lanka for a week or so.
While Ron Kalifa, who is a member of the ECB board, edges closer to choosing a chair — it is six months now since Ian Watmore left the post — the first point of order for the men’s set-up is filling the managing director role. The application window has closed and the interviews begin this week. Expect progress promptly.
While some left-field names, such as Mark Nicholas, have applied, it is those who have been approached who are the favourites: Marcus North and Rob Key.
Andrew Strauss, who held the post for three years between 2015 and 2018 and is back in an interim capacity, has led the recruitment process. While he is in charge, expect Ed Smith’s name to linger. And bear in mind, too, that Strauss likes to spring surprises, as he did with Trevor Bayliss as head coach in 2015 and Smith as selector in 2018.
North and Key are candidates with a bit in common. They both played some international cricket, but not heaps. Both are 42 — young enough to have relatively recent playing experience — and are also contemporaries of Strauss. They played county cricket across two eras: when it was considered particularly strong, creating the team that got to No1 in the world in 2011, and after that, when it had weakened. North retired in 2014.
Key was a one-club man with Kent, a long-time captain and one of the outstanding batters of his generation, while North played for six counties, including Durham, where he is director of cricket. He has a sense of the politics of the scene.
Key, as a broadcaster with Sky and columnist with Standard Sport, has taken a less conventional path to contention for an administration role, but has been known since his playing days as a strong thinker on the game, with strident views and excellent contacts across a couple of generations and nations.
That will be helpful when doing the managing director’s first and most important job: finding a new head coach. He is yet to indicate publicly whether he would take the role, but it is to his credit that he is putting his head above the media centre parapet and having these conversations.
North, too, would have access to a cabal of Australian coaches — many of them, like him, from West Australia and former batters of some pedigree — of a similar generation: Simon Katich, Adam Voges, Chris Rogers, the Hussey brothers and, of course, Justin Langer. He is interested, but whether he would be England’s cup of tea remains to be seen.
There is not much point speculating on the head coach’s role until the managing director has his feet under the table. Expect, though, that the coach is a bit firmer and a bit more batting focused than Silverwood was. Paul Collingwood remains in contention for the role of white-ball coach, with Eoin Morgan still the main man.
Once that business is sorted, they will have a say in the wider strategic adjustments to the red-ball game. For that, there is plenty on the table, especially for the County Championship. The change has barely even begun.
