Mark Butcher is not in favour of England appointing two head coaches, something that the new managing director of cricket Rob Key has advocated.
Key, who took over the role from Ashley Giles, has been vocal about England splitting up the coaching job. The former Sky Sports pundit believes that Chris Silverwood, former England coach, who was sacked after the Ashes demolition, was given an “impossible task” of being in charge of all three formats, and that the new era could see a split-coaching set-up, with one coach for white-ball cricket, and another for Test matches.
Butcher, however, disagrees and says “you should have one man in charge” because cricketers might then prefer one dressing room to the other.
Speaking on Sky Sports, he said, “I don’t necessarily subscribe to the view that the coaching roles should be split. I still think you should have one man in charge. Yes, because of the way the scheduling is, one man would not be able to fulfill all the roles and in that case, you need good assistant coaches and people you can delegate to.
“But I would rather have one man in charge of the whole thing for the simple reason that it is human nature that if you have players moving between two dressing rooms under different leaders they are going to prefer the way one guy does it to the other. I think one man is the key.”
Silverwood was in charge of leading the selection committee as well after Ed Smith was removed from the role last year. Butcher is of the view that a coach should only handle one responsibility, and that Smith should return to head his previous job.
“I don’t have a preferred candidate but I think if you have the right team – director of cricket, a good and reliable, and perhaps someone who has been in the job before, such as Ed Smith, as chairman of selectors on the outside – then the captain is able to go out there and make the team his own.
“The coach should be a facilitator and bring out the best in the players he has, allowing the captain to run the ship. The captain, unlike in football, is the most important person and his decisions stick.”
