A new North star? England cricket turn to Australian as new selector

England are poised to turn to an Australian as their new national selector, with Durham director of cricket Marcus North in line to land the job this week.

North, who played 21 Tests for Australia, including two Ashes series, between February 2009 and December 2010, appears to have beaten off competition from former England fast bowlers Steven Finn and Darren Gough to land the job after final interviews. He is expected to accept and his appointment is likely to be confirmed in the coming days.

North would effectively replace Luke Wright, who stepped down in the wake of last winter’s Ashes for family reasons, citing the strain of so much travel. Wright’s job title was England selector, while North would fill the apparently more senior position of national selector, which has not existed for five years since Ed Smith was made redundant. Smith has gone full circle and will join the ECB board later this year.

While England have had plenty of foreign coaches, including incumbent Brendon McCullum, West Australian North would be the first man not from these shores to be charged with selecting the national team.

North’s appointment is a nod to the county game. He played for five counties and has been in charge of cricket at Durham for the past eight years. Since the start of 2025, he has been in charge of the men’s and women’s programmes at the county and he is well regarded in the game.

Under his watch, Durham have recovered from the devastation of their enforced relegation for financial reasons in 2016 and looked to be re-establishing themselves in the top flight until a surprise relegation last September. They have started the new Division Two season well and have steadily supplied England with players in recent years, including four members of last winter’s Ashes party. Top-order batsmen Emilio Gay and Ben McKinney are among those vying for a Test cap this summer.

Finn, a former team-mate of McCullum at Middlesex, was a prime candidate, but North’s background in administration and work in the county game appear to have secured him the role. Finn, like director of cricket Rob Key, would have been coming into the job from a career in broadcasting.

North has lived in the North East for years, having met his wife while playing for Gateshead Fell Cricket Club in 2000. After retiring, he was director of cricket at South Northumberland before getting the job at Durham, where he succeeded Geoff Cook in late 2018. Alongside his role with Durham, he worked as Northern Superchargers’ – now called Sunrisers Leeds – director of cricket in the early years of the Hundred.

North has worked with Test captain Ben Stokes at Durham and white-ball captain Harry Brook at the Superchargers, where he also appointed Andrew Flintoff as head coach. Flintoff is now in charge of England Lions, the second-string team, and will be working closely with North.

North is expected to be in position in time to help select England’s first squads of the summer next week. These include the Test squad to face New Zealand from June 4, and a Lions group to take on South Africa A from May 22.

North is close to Ben Stokes. But the selector’s job is a wider brief than the Test team. It covers white-ball cricket, which is outside of Stokes’s remit and all levels below.

North will share similar opinions to Stokes about the direction of the Test team and gives the captain a powerful ally as he looks to stamp his authority on the team and drive them forward in a different style. Stokes may have healed the rift with McCullum – we shall see on that one – but they shared different views on the team’s future not that long ago and how they should play. North will share much of Stokes’s vision.

North knows the county game inside out, not only players but also his fellow directors of cricket and head coaches, which will improve communication. He can heal the rifts that have developed over the last three years and bring an outsider’s perspective to the England environment that from the outside has looked like an echo chamber.

He is the most English of Australians after spending a decent chunk of the past 20 years in county and club cricket as a player, coach and director of cricket. He was also second to Rob Key for the job of England director of cricket four years ago. His appointment to this role puts him in an ideal position to take over when Key steps down.

One of the failings of the Ashes series acknowledged by the England and Wales Cricket Board was the lack of planning for the Australia tour, which they blame on several factors.

Most important in their eyes was the lack of experience within the governing body of organising Ashes tours. Almost all had left after the 2021-22 trip and the subsequent change in leadership at the top of the ECB.

North played 21 Tests for Australia and will be in position to ensure proper planning for the next Ashes tour in 2029-30, which may well have helped win him the job ahead of the other candidates.

Durham’s relegation last year took a little shine off the good work, but it has to be remembered North and chief executive Tim Bostock picked the club up at a very difficult time, with the county broke and relegated as punishment for financial difficulties.

It was a major achievement to get them back up into Division one at all. North has experience of rebuilding work. That will be handy.

The Telegraph