1. Charlotte Edwards will be stepping down from her other coaching roles and focusing solely on England
Hampshire, Sydney and Mumbai’s loss is our gain!
2. Edwards already knows who the next England captain will be – and the rest of us will find out soon
Obviously, she didn’t tell us who she has in mind (partly because it sounds like she hasn’t spoken to the players yet – she’s properly starting off at Loughborough next week). There was maybe a bit of a hint later in the presser when she was assessing England’s current player pool and mentioned 4 senior players by name – Heather Knight (already ruled out!), Amy Jones (doesn’t want the job), Nat Sciver-Brunt, and Tammy Beaumont. We might be reading too much into that though…
Anyway, we’ll find out soon enough – she intends to appoint someone within the next couple of weeks. (It seems that Raf was completely wrong on this week’s episode of The CRICKETher Weekly – on all counts!)
3. Edwards isn’t a continuity candidate
Firstly, she’s about as anti-Jon-Ball as it’s possible to be. “They’ve had this mantra of entertaining and inspiring… [my role] is changing their focus. For me it’s about their game smarts and their game awareness,” she said. “It’s about winning. I just want to create some intelligent players who win games of cricket for England.”
Secondly, Lottie’s input into the Ashes review seems to have been pretty critical in convincing Clare Connor that there WAS an issue with the England team culture – Connor denied that this was a problem in her initial press conference the day after the Ashes whitewash, but now seems to have accepted that she was wrong, saying: “The review told us that we did need a significant reset in terms of… the environment.”
And lastly, while obviously being diplomatic enough not to name any names, Edwards also said that she would be ensuring professional standards around fitness were fully upheld throughout the England squad. “I will make the players more accountable for fitness,” she said.
4. County cricket is really going to matter
All England players will be available for the first seven rounds of the new 50-over One-Day Cup – Edwards has already decreed it, and she made it pretty clear that she will be enforcing this. “I want us to pick on performances,” she said. “You only learn that by playing. We’ve got a lot of young players who haven’t played enough cricket.”
She also effectively said that from now on, selection for England would depend on putting in good performances in county cricket. “I want England players to dominate county cricket,” she said.
5. The England head coach role was not advertised and the Rooney Rule was not adopted
Connor was pretty clear: she and Jonathan Finch did the review and concluded that Edwards was the candidate they wanted, based on 3 set criteria:
- Proven track record as a head coach
- The ability to create a winning culture
- A forensic understanding of the women’s game
If you ask us, the final point is essentially an admission that they got it wrong with Lewis, although when pressed on that (by Raf), Connor refused to concede this.
Anyhow, Connor did also say that the Rooney Rule had been adopted for the two previous appointments – Jon Lewis in 2022 and Lisa Keightley in 2019 – and that she remains committed to using it in future.
6. Some outsiders were involved in the Ashes review, but we may never know who they were
We found out tantalisingly little about the actual process of the review: Connor said that “some notable figures in the world game” had contributed, including several Australians, but apparently all contributions were made on condition of anonymity. So, unless those involved want to out themselves, that seems as close as we’re going to get to knowing who exactly they were.
7. The ECB will be recruiting a new national selector
Other than getting the England players to play more domestic cricket, this seems to be one of the key outcomes of the review. It’s worth remembering that in 2015, the ECB abolished their entire panel of England selectors, concentrating selection entirely in the hands of the head coach and leaving a lot of very unhappy people in their wake. A decade later, we have a mea culpa from Connor & co that this was the wrong thing to do. “We will be going out to recruit in the next couple of days for a national selector,” Connor said. “It’s bringing in some additional outside perspectives – that will be a key role in our leadership team.”
