Wednesday 23 May 2018 17:31, UK
James Taylor has been made a talent scout for the England cricket teams.
The 28-year-old, who was forced to retire from the game because of a serious heart condition in 2016, is part of a new scouting network along with fellow ex-England internationals Marcus Trescothick, Chris Read, Steve Rhodes, Richard Dawson and Glen Chapple.
The new talent identification roles will be responsible for finding players for the senior Test, T20 and One-Day sides.
Upon temporarily stepping down as England director of cricket, Andrew Strauss told Sky Sports: "We are looking for better information on players, better player ID and a fully structured scouting network to select England teams as well as our pathway teams.
"They are guys in and around the county game, with real credibility. They will be scouting on people that 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 [Smith] 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."
