Paul Farbrace: England coach to leave role in blow to Ashes and World Cup preparations

Farbrace will leave his position at the end of England’s white-ball tour of the West Indies after five years in the job

England’s preparations for the 2019 World Cup and the Ashes have been dealt a blow with the news that their assistant coach, Paul Farbrace, will be leaving to become the sporting director at Warwickshire.

A trusted confidant of coach Trevor Bayliss, Farbrace will leave his position at the end of England’s white-ball tour of the West Indies, after five years in the job. With Bayliss also leaving at the end of the summer, and Ashley Giles replacing Andrew Strauss as the director of England men’s cricket in January, it marks an unwelcome period of upheaval for the side ahead of its biggest summer in a generation.

Farbrace has become a popular and trusted member of the England setup during his five years in the position. Having led Sri Lanka to the World Twenty20 in 2014, he joined as assistant to Peter Moores, later performing the same role under Bayliss, and taking temporary charge of the side for the 2015 series against New Zealand, and again for last summer’s T20s against India.

“Paul was integral, alongside Andrew Strauss, Trevor Bayliss and Eoin Morgan, in transforming our white-ball strategy, which has seen us become the best team in the world leading into a World Cup year,” Giles said. His efforts in developing players in the elite environment will benefit him in his new role at Edgbaston.

Giles now has the unenviable task of sourcing his successor with barely three months to go until the World Cup. Bayliss’s departure in September is likely to prompt a wholesale rethink of the coaching setup, which could even involve splitting the head coach job into red and white-ball roles.

With no clarity over who will replace Bayliss, or even what jobs will be available in the new regime, Farbrace has clearly decided on the long-term security of the Edgbaston role, where he will ironically replace Giles.

He begins at the end of March, ahead of the new county season in April, and will also be in line for a role with the Birmingham-based Hundred franchise when it launches in 2020.

“There is never a great time to leave an international setup,” Farbrace admitted. “And despite what will be a fantastic summer for English cricket, the opportunity to shape the future of one of the game’s biggest counties was too much to resist."

In the meantime, an interim appointment is most likely, with Paul Collingwood - already in the Caribbean as a white-ball coach - one potential candidate, although he may ultimately have designs on Bayliss’s job in the long run. The bowling coach Chris Silverwood is highly regarded, and there is also the possibility of Andy Flower, currently coaching the England Lions, taking a role with the senior side on a short-term basis.