Paul Allott, the Sky commentator and former England seam bowler, is poised to become Lancashire’s new director of cricket.
The 60-year-old, who played for Lancashire from 1978 to 1992 and won 13 Test caps, is understood to have reached in‑principle agreement for the role and is expected to leave Sky, where he has worked as a pundit, analyst and presenter of Cricket Writers on TV for the past two decades.
Allott is already a prominent figure at Old Trafford, where he sits on the board, and was instrumental in overseeing the appointment of Glen Chapple as head coach when the club’s previous director of cricket, Ashley Giles, returned to Warwickshire last winter.
Speaking at the time, Allott said the club would take time to consider whether to create an additional director of cricket role but added that his preference was for one that did not directly run the first team but instead took an over-arching view of the county’s cricket operations.
This was the case under Giles’s predecessor, Mike Watkinson, who worked above the former England coach Peter Moores when the club last won the County Championship in 2011. Lancashire sit second in Division One after avoiding relegation the previous summer.
