FORMER NOTTS DUO READ AND TAYLOR PART OF ECB SCOUTING NETWORK

Former Nottinghamshire players Chris Read and James Taylor are two of six ex-internationals to have been appointed to the England and Wales Cricket Board’s new scouting network.

Devonian wicketkeeper-batsman Read, 39, retired at the end of last season after 10 years as Captain.

Taylor, 28, was forced to give up playing in 2016 after being diagnosed with an incurable heart condition.

They will be joined in their scouting roles by Marcus Trescothick, Steve Rhodes, Richard Dawson and Glen Chapple.

The six men 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 – reporting into Ed Smith, the new National Selector.

 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 differently, 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.”

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