Glen Chapple named ECB scout
The England and Wales Cricket Board has this evening confirmed that Lancashire Head Coach Glen Chapple, along with five former international players, has been named as a scout reporting into Ed Smith, the new National Selector.
Chapple joins Marcus Trescothick, James Taylor, Chris Read, Steve Rhodes and Richard Dawson who will take on talent identification roles as part of a fresh approach to scouting, assessing and selecting players for the senior Test, T20 and One-Day sides, all reporting into Ed Smith.
They join a network of scouts who were put in place last summer to monitor players for the Young Lions and Lions programmes.
“They are guys in and around the county game, with real credibility,” said Andrew Strauss, the ECB’s Director of England Cricket.
“They will be scouting on people who aren’t in their team, with a real focus on England’s needs both at home and away from home, and assessing players relative to that.
“One of the central tenets of good player ID is many eyes, many times. You want many different people that might look at it slightly different, looking at different players in different match situations. Having that network allows us to do that better than we have up until now.
“It’s also about having guys who have real discipline-specific roles - so for someone looking at opening batsmen, there aren’t many people in the world better than Marcus Trescothick to be able to judge what’s required at international level.
“I think that’s a really healthy step forward for us and Ed has control of that. His role is to, over a period of time, take us forward and to have a talent ID system that is world-leading.”