Ashley Giles is appointed England’s director of cricket

Ashley Giles will succeed Andrew Strauss as the managing director of England’s men’s cricket in January, the ECB has confirmed. Tom Harrison, the chief executive, described Giles as “the standout candidate amongst a very strong field”.

Giles was a stalwart member of the England team that Strauss played in at the beginning of this century and that won the Ashes in the greatest series in living memory in 2005. He may not have been the most talented cricketer in that dressing room but Giles was reliable and a fine influence.

After retiring from playing the game in 2007 he has won respect as a no-nonsense coach, manager and selector. He has always been regarded as possessing a safe pair of hands though not necessarily permanent ones.

He has flitted around several of the key posts in English cricket, as Warwickshire’s coach, as a Test selector and as England’s ODI/T20 coach during Andy Flower’s stewardship. Now he will start his new job as Flower’s boss. Then he was in charge at Lancashire before returning to Edgbaston as their sport director in 2017. The ECB must hope that he will stay a little longer in this job, which is a lucrative one that theoretically has him on the top rung of the ladder of English cricket.

No wonder Giles made sure to thank Warwickshire County Cricket Club and in particular the chairman, Norman Gascoigne, and chief executive, Neil Snowball, “for their guidance and support” during his time at Edgbaston.

Naturally Giles expressed great enthusiasm for his new post, a lot more, in fact, than some of his peers. Despite the “very strong field” mentioned by Harrison there were some heavyweight notables who were not available like Mike Atherton, Alec Stewart and Wasim Khan, who has recently opted to become the managing director of Pakistan cricket.

Giles said: “I believe it is important to have a strong international set-up, which is showing great promise in what will be a significant year for our red- and white-ball teams leading into the ICC’s Men’s Cricket World Cup this summer and the Ashes. The next 12 months could transform the game like no other in recent memory.”

It is indeed an exciting time to take charge as England sides in both Test and 50-over formats are improving and playing some exciting cricket, though the transformation of the game he mentions is not guaranteed; the 2019 World Cup is the first of the five to be held in this country that will not be available live on free-to-air television. Ultimately it is part of Giles’s remit to try to ensure that the nation notices what is going on and how good England are.

The cricketing building blocks are already in place for this summer so Giles should not have to worry about them. The identity of the England captains and their coaches until September 2019 are known. The critical decision for Giles on the horizon relates to the identity of the replacement for Trevor Bayliss, who has confirmed he will definitely be finishing as head coach after the Ashes series. Giles may consider splitting the post into white- and red-ball cricket, though his own experience of that system was not a particularly pleasant one. It ended up with him being sacked by Paul Downton in April 2014 before the second appointment of Peter Moores as England’s coach. Now it is Giles’s turn to do the hiring and firing.

So the 2019 season could allow Giles an exciting and rewarding start in his new post. It is just possible that England might be World Cup winners and Ashes victors in the same year. Then his position becomes trickier. In 2020 the skeleton of the new domestic structure that has been constructed by an ECB committee under the chairmanship of Wasim Khan will be in place and it may become more difficult to ensure that England maintain their high standards in Test and 50-over cricket.

In 2020 and beyond England’s best young cricketers will be in great demand for two lucrative short-form competitions comprising about 30 games in the middle of the summer even before they consider their winter options. This will inevitably challenge England’s ability to prepare for and prevail in the longer forms of the game. In time this is likely to preoccupy the new director. For the moment it must be assumed that Giles is in favour of the new domestic structure for 2020 otherwise he would not have accepted the post he has and the board would not have offered it to him.