“The second you finish playing Test cricket is the second you’re most relevant, you’re most valuable as a coach,” he said on The Analyst Inside Cricket. “If Jimmy Anderson finishes playing cricket and they make him do England Women, or Lancashire seconds or something like that, to get his stripes, it will be the biggest crying shame in the world. And before anyone cries foul, I’m not having a go at the England Women team, or the Lancashire second team. You know my point. The second he finishes, he is fresh, he knows all the players, he knows the game currently. He’s not had to take a few years off. He should go straight in as head coach or head bowling coach for England.”

Swann’s comments are likely to anger fans of the women’s game, many of whom feel that coaching a national women’s team is a specialised role, rather than something a men’s Test cricketer can take up the moment they finish playing as a stepping stone to another position. They may also take umbrage at the implicit equation between the role of England Women head coach and being the coach of a county second team, rather than a job that now holds the prestige befitting that of a national coaching position.

Lisa Keightley, the current England Women head coach, was appointed after a lengthy recruitment process in which, according to Clare Connor, the ECB’s managing director of women’s cricket, more men than women were interviewed.

Mark Robinson, her predecessor, was one of the most respected coaches on the men’s county circuit at the time of his appointment, having been at the helm at Sussex for a decade from 2005 onwards. In that time, the south coast side enjoyed one of their most successful periods, winning two County Championship and four white-ball trophies.

While Robinson might not have been a cricketer of the calibre of Anderson, who is England’s all-time leading Test wicket taker, Courtney Walsh, West Indies’ leading Test wicket taker, only ascended to the role of West Indies Women head coach in October this year after stints as the Bangladesh men’s bowling coach and as assistant to former West Indies Women head coach Gus Logie.

Swann’s comments were made in the context of bemoaning his lack of involvement with England since retiring from cricket during the 2013/14 Ashes. Describing himself as “miffed”, he said: “Arguably, I should have been asked immediately to coach all the spinners [when I retired]. Because that was me, I was relevant, I knew the game, I knew everyone inside out. That’s when you can impart everything. You don’t get that if you’re a few years out of it. You lose that straightaway and become run of the mill, you become humdrum, which is a crying shame.”

A version of these quotes originally appeared in an article published by The Cricketer, with the references to England Women removed.