Ed Smith is poised for a dramatic return to the top table of English cricket as a non-executive director on the ECB board, five years after he was sacked as national selector.
Smith, 48, is a former Kent batsman and Middlesex captain who played three Tests for England in 2003, then served as the national selector between 2018 and 2021.
Now he is in line for a role on the England and Wales Cricket Board’s main board, charged with bringing more first-hand cricket knowledge, in response to the dismal Ashes tour in the winter. It is expected the position will provide oversight of the England management team, which was identified as one area of weakness in that 4-1 series defeat.
Smith’s appointment is expected in the coming weeks, but it seems he is unlikely to join the board until October, when his one-year term as president of Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s ends.
One of the long-standing criticisms of the ECB has been the lack of cricket expertise and experience on its main board, and the oversight that provides on the activities of the national team. ECB chairman Richard Thompson leads a board with broad and varied experience in the business and corporate worlds, but of the 12 current members, only Ebony Rainford-Brent has top-level playing experience, with Surrey and England.
Rob Key, as managing director, feeds into board meetings, while Sir Andrew Strauss was previously an adviser to the board.
In the wake of the Ashes drubbing, Thompson and chief executive Richard Gould made it a priority to bring greater cricketing experience onto the board to increase the accountability on those running the national team. Finding the right candidate through a formal recruitment process was not straightforward given the broad web of conflicts of interest that ruled out many potential candidates, especially those actively working in broadcasting.
Smith may be charged with providing the checks and balances on issues like England’s preparation for major tours – a major problem for the Ashes – and playing a role in recruitment when Key eventually leaves his post as managing director. An Ashes review, led by Gould and Thompson, concluded that Key, head coach Brendon McCullum and Test captain Ben Stokes would all remain in post.
Smith was a team-mate of Key at Kent, before moving to Middlesex in 2005. He averaged 41.8, with 34 centuries, in first-class cricket. He retired in 2008 and has had a varied post-playing career as an author, academic, commentator, selector and administrator. He is the holder of a double-first from the University of Cambridge in history and has written five books, including two while he was still playing.
Smith also had a brief foray into football, where, alongside former ECB performance director Mo Bobat, he was Derby County’s “head of sporting intelligence”. The role ran from June 2024 to October 2025, when Smith became MCC president and Bobat took over as the Lord’s Hundred team London Spirit’s director of cricket. Smith and Bobat, who is also director of cricket at Indian Premier League champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru, worked together at ECB.
Smith left his role as national selector in 2021, when Ashley Giles, the then-director of cricket, opted to hand responsibility for selection to the all-format head coach Chris Silverwood. Less than a year later, Giles and Silverwood had also left their roles in the wake of another difficult Ashes tour. Both now work in the county game with Worcestershire and Essex respectively.
Smith was a deep thinker on selection, and a hands-on presence in the role, sometimes rubbing players up the wrong way. He even used his experience in the job as the basis for a book, Making Decisions, published in 2022.
England have not had a formal head of selection since Smith held the role, but are currently recruiting for a national selector. Applications closed on Friday for the role, making it unlikely that the successful candidate will be in position by the time England name their first squad of the summer in around a month. The first Test against New Zealand is on June 4, and England are expected to have a brief camp at Loughborough beforehand to prepare.