Mickey Arthur drafted into new coaches panel to mend England’s ties with county cricket
Mickey Arthur, the former South Africa and Pakistan head coach, is one of four appointments to England’s new County Insight Group as the national team seeks to repair relations with the domestic game after last winter’s Ashes defeat,Among the recommendations from the internal Ashes review that led to Rob Key and Brendon McCullum remaining as director of cricket and men’s head coach respectively was improved dialogue with the county game, not least regarding selection,The sense previously was that England were not interested in the views of those on the shop floor,Paul Farbrace, head coach at Sussex, had summed up the mood as: “There has almost been a feeling in county cricket that: ‘We’re not bothered whether England are doing well or not,’ and that saddens me,”To that end Key has appointed four county head coaches – Arthur, Richard Dawson, Alan Richardson and Anthony McGrath – to sit on a new panel that will meet the England hierarchy three or four times a season.
The intention is for them to provide feedback and background on players identified by the scouting network.At the Ashes review in March, Key said: “I never wanted to be feeling like England was meddling with the county game.And, actually, that was a mistake.There’s a way that we can work together better.“[We want] feedback coming in about the character of players, what they’re like under pressure.
So I hope [the insight group] is going to enhance what we do from a selection point of view and also feel like there’s a connection to the county game.”McCullum spoke to county head coaches on Zoom at the start of the season, but is not slated to be part of the panel.It will consist of Key, the performance director, Ed Barney, and David Court, the head of player ID, plus the national selector that is in the process of being recruited.Arthur, now at Derbyshire, represents the most high-profile appointment, bringing experience from past international roles with South Africa, Pakistan and Australia.Dawson, head coach at Glamorgan, has held roles in the international pathway, including the Lions, and is an England scout.
Richardson, head coach at Worcestershire, and McGrath, director of cricket at Yorkshire, are similarly highly thought of and both had short-term roles as assistant England coaches when the Covid-19 pandemic demanded additional support staff.These four county representatives will not be selecting, but rather informing the process, with the new national selector to be part of a separate panel that also includes the relevant men’s captains – Ben Stokes and Harry Brook – plus Key, Barney, Court, McCullum and Andrew Flintoff, the Lions’ head coach.The selector role was left vacant when Luke Wright stepped down in March and the deadline for applications closed on 17 April.It remains to be seen whether the role is filled before the three-Test series against New Zealand starts at Lord’s on 4 June.Another shortcoming identified after the 4-1 Ashes defeat was a lack of cricket knowledge at board level.
To address this, Ed Smith, national selector from 2018 to 2021, will join the England and Wales Cricket Board as a non-executive director in October once his one-year term as MCC president is completed.
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The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre has called time on the password – from now on, you should use a passkey.The NCSC said this week it would no longer recommend using passwords where passkeys were available. They should be consumers’ first choice of login across all digital services because passwords were not secure enough to stand up to modern cyber threats.Security officials describe a passkey as a “digital stamp” that allows you to sign in to apps and websites and is stored on your device.It is a password-free form of login
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