James Taylor has been named as one of England’s talent scouts

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Former England batsman James Taylor and opener Marcus Trescothick have been named talent scouts for the national team.

Taylor was forced to retire after he was diagnosed with a serious heart condition, known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), in 2016.

Besides Taylor and Trescothick, Chris Read, Steve Rhodes, Richard Dawson and Glen Chapple have also been appointed as scouts.

All of scouts will be responsible for identifying players that would be beneficial to England’s Test, ODI and Twenty20 squads.

“We are looking for better information on players, better player ID and a fully structured scouting network to select England teams as well as our pathway teams,” Andrew Strauss, who will be temporarily stepping down from his position as England’s director of cricket, told Sky Sports. “They are guys in and around the county game, with real credibility. They will be scouting on people that aren’t in their team, with a real focus on England’s needs both at home and away from home, and assessing players relative to that.

“One of the central tenets of good player ID is many eyes, many times. You want many different people that might look at it slightly different, looking at different players in different match situations. Having that network allows us to do that better than we have up until now.

“It’s also about having guys who have real discipline-specific roles, so for someone looking at opening batsmen, there aren’t many people in the world better than Marcus Trescothick to be able to judge what’s required at international level.

“I think that’s a really healthy step forward for us and Ed [Smith] has control of that. His role is to, over a period of time, take us forward and to have a talent ID system that is world-leading.”