Former Lancashire coach John Stanworth joins England women's set-up

John Stanworth, the former director of Lancashire's cricket academy, has become the latest recruit to the ECB's restructured England Women's Pathway.

Stanworth, who spent three decades at Lancashire as a player, first-team coach and ultimately the county's first academy director, has taken up the post of head coach of the England Women's Senior Academy.

For this winter, 19 players have been selected from 13 different counties for the Senior Academy programme, which will utilise the National Cricket Performance Centre at Loughborough to improve the experience, performance and conditioning of promising talent. Stanworth will sit on the senior management team alongside the head coach Mark Robinson, who himself joined the England women's set-up from Sussex in November 2015.

Although he left Lancashire under something of a cloud last year, following the appointment of Ashley Giles as director of cricket, Stanworth earned huge respect for his role at the club, and is credited with overseeing the development of several young members of the current first-team squad, including England's opener-in-waiting, Haseeb Hameed.

In a separate appointment to the women's set-up, Salliann Briggs has recruited to lead the Academy programme for emerging talent, which is also based at the National Cricket Performance Centre in Loughborough. A further 17 players, representing 10 different counties, have been selected for the Academy, which means that the talent for the three international programmes is drawn from a total of 17 counties.

"The pinnacle for any talented, aspiring young cricketer is to play and win matches for England, and through the England Women's Pathway we believe that we are developing a structure to support their journey," said Clare Connor, England's director of women's cricket.

"The introduction of the six new Regional Development Centres aligned to the Kia Super League structure helps us to significantly broaden the talent pool that we are working with at the base of the pathway, and without any age constraints, we can take a broader and extended view of a young player's potential.

"From there, the England Women's Academy and England Women's Senior Academy are in place to help bridge the gap to international cricket, developing players with the skills needed on and off the field to perform for England.

"In Salliann Briggs and John Stanworth we have two superb Head Coaches for these programmes. John brings a wealth of experience in developing high potential players from his role as Lancashire CCC Academy Director for over ten years, and I am delighted to welcome him to this new role."