Sarah Taylor will play a ground-breaking part in Brendon McCullum’s beefed-up England backroom team this summer.
Taylor, 36, is a legendary figure in wicketkeeping circles for her immense skill – especially when standing up to the stumps – as part of the England women’s team that won World Cups in 2009 and 2017, before retiring in 2019. Across formats she won 226 caps and as well as being a supreme wicketkeeper, scored seven ODI hundreds.
Taylor was once described by Adam Gilchrist as the “best wicketkeeper in the world”, irrespective of gender, and was the first woman to play men’s first-grade cricket in Australia when keeping for Northern Districts in Adelaide. It is widely accepted that she would have been totally at home taking the gloves in men’s first-class cricket.
Since retiring, she has embarked on a career in coaching, and has worked with Andrew Flintoff’s England Lions programme since 2024. She has also spent time working at Sussex and Manchester Originals (now Super Giants) in the Hundred. Now she has been promoted to work with the full men’s squad as fielding and wicketkeeping coach for the Test series against New Zealand.
In a watershed moment for English cricket, Taylor is believed to be the first female coach to work with a men’s national team in this country across all sport. It is common for female physios, fitness coaches, nutritionists and medical staff to take a place in men’s backroom teams, but not providing specialist technical coaching.
In franchise cricket, Taylor’s former team-mate Alex Hartley worked with Multan Sultans’ spinners, while Lisa Keightley was part of the backroom team at Paarl Royals. But at the highest level, this appears new ground.
Among the many shortcomings of England’s approach for last winter’s Ashes was the lack of specialist coaching support for the players, with head coach McCullum preferring a slimmed-down backroom team. So they travelled light, with a coaching team of McCullum, assistants Jeetan Patel and Marcus Trescothick and bowling consultant David Saker. Tim Southee appeared briefly to work with the seamers, too. Since Paul Collingwood left the set-up last year, there has been no fielding coach, while wicketkeeping coach Bruce French left some years ago.
Now, England are looking to rectify that. Carl Hopkinson was re-employed as fielding coach for the T20 World Cup, leading to a general upturn in catching, but is unavailable for the New Zealand series because of a clash with the IPL. He will be used again, but Taylor will combine her work with the Lions with the full squad.
“Sarah Taylor will take on the fielding role for this series,” said managing director Rob Key. “She’s done a lot of work [with] the Lions. We’ve been unbelievably impressed with her and the way she goes about her business.
“She’s part of our system, so she moves from [the] Lions. When it comes to the Pakistan series later this summer, or the white-ball squad against India, she will be someone that [we] will definitely look at and look to use.
“She’s one of the best in the business [at] what she does. She’s been outstanding, and she’s worked a lot with Andrew Flintoff and [performance director] Ed Barney. They can’t speak highly enough of her.”
As well as Taylor, Southee will return on a consultancy basis to work alongside Troy Cooley, the man who is credited for pulling together the legendary attack of 2005 and who Key describes as England’s new “bowling overlord”. There will also be coaching support from Young Lions coach Michael Yardy and Durham assistant coach Will Gidman, alongside Patel and Trescothick.
McCullum will return to the country next week in advance of a training camp at Loughborough for the Test squad.
England have also confirmed the appointment of their new national selector, Marcus North, who joins from Durham.