Published: Dec 21, 2018, 03:35 PM (IST)
Edited: Dec 21, 2018, 03:35 PM (IST)
Ashely Giles is set to take over as the new director of England Cricket from January and his first challenge will be to decide whether the men’s team needs different coaches for red-ball and white-ball cricket.
Giles will succeed Andrew Strauss who stepped down in order to be with his ailing wife who is battling cancer. With the World Test championship coming into play, the ‘different dynamics’ could shape Giles’ decision, feels England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) chief executive Tom Harrison.
“I personally think this is going to be Ashley’s first main decision that he’s going to have to make,” Harrison told Sky Sports. “I think it is going to be about looking at the schedule, which is going to be slightly different because of the different dynamics of having a world Test Championship – so you are going to have shorter, sharper series in the Test match game – and then having a World Cricket League across 13 teams in the one-day side, then a lot more international T20 to play as well.”
England’s current head coach Trevor Bayliss has already announced that he will quit from the role come September and has backed the theory of split-coaches in the past.
England have already had two different coaches in the past when Giles himself took charge of ODI and T20I teams while Andy Flower led the Test squad between 2012 and 2014.
“There is going to be a slightly different balance going forward and it will be for Ashley to work out whether that can be done by one man or whether it needs to be split; that’s going to be a decision that we’ll try to work out. What we know is that we need the best coaches coaching the teams at that level and, if you take that a level lower, we need our best coaches coaching our younger cricketers across the county game as well – so there is also a focus on the pathway that is going to take some of Ashley’s time and some of his responsibility as well,” Harrison added.
