Stuart Broad, Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler among senior England players fighting for their careers

England’s crushing Ashes defeat is set to end a number of careers, but a smooth transition towards a new era is going to be difficult.

Stuart Broad needs to perform in one of the final Tests to save his career

England’s crushing Ashes defeat is set to end a number of coaching and playing careers, and so it should, but with a party needing to be named around the end of this month for a three-match Test tour to the West Indies in March, a smooth transition towards a new era is going to be difficult.

Much of the debate since Australia secured an unassailable 3-0 lead in the third Test in Melbourne has focused on head coach Chris Silverwood and captain Joe Root having their necks measured for the noose, but senior players such as Stuart Broad, Jonny Bairstow and Jos Buttler are also fighting for their futures.

Broad, 35, may need a stellar performance in one of the two remaining Tests — assuming he gets a game — to dissuade him from taking up a lucrative offer to join the Sky Sports commentary team.

English cricket may need a considered inquest into the state of its red-ball game, but managing director of men’s cricket Ashley Giles had more immediate concerns after arriving in Sydney. If he is to remove Silverwood, as he must, then he is going to have to move swiftly. The scope for him finding a long-term replacement in time for the West Indies is possible, but limited.

More likely, he could axe Silverwood and appoint a caretaker to handle the series in the West Indies. The situation is complicated by the fact that there is overwhelming logic in favour of splitting the head coach’s duties into red-ball and white-ball spheres.

Such a move would require consideration and consultation, before the process moved on to the identities of those who may fill the posts. The faster Giles looks to sort the situation, the likelier it is that he will make further missteps.

Giles himself is already under pressure, which is why he may look to ease the heat by acting against his head coach. He is under scrutiny for appointing Silverwood in the first place, for failing to keep faith with promises that the Silverwood reign would lead to a switch in emphasis towards Test cricket, for absorbing the role of national selector into the head coach’s duties, and also his advocacy of rest and rotation.

If distinct red-ball and white-ball coaches were appointed, the position of national selector would probably have to be restored to co-ordinate resources across the two spheres. It would be a difficult thing for Giles to enact given it is less than nine months since he removed Ed Smith, but he may have no choice.

The schedule is so full an informal division of the head coach’s duties has already happened. Paul Collingwood, the assistant coach, left the Ashes tour early to manage an entirely different squad of players for five Twenty20s in Barbados this month. Collingwood would be a candidate to run the white-ball teams and might conceivably find himself asked to act as caretaker for the West Indies Tests as well, if not Graham Thorpe, the other assistant coach.

Silverwood, who is isolating in Melbourne because a family member contracted Covid and will miss the start of the fourth Test, cannot survive the present crisis. Privately, he has accepted that there could never be any guarantees about how long he may last in his role; he works in a results-based industry and England’s results in 2021 in Test cricket — though not white-ball cricket — were catastrophically bad in losing a record nine matches.

No less importantly, he was party to a number of strategic blunders. His worst mistake was clocking up 42 changes to the Test team in the past 13 matches since the start of the series in India, an average of more than three per game.

With coaching staff also coming and going, there simply has been no continuity or stability — in stark contrast to the white-ball sides.

Even if Giles identifies the right Test coach in the next few weeks, that person may be unable to start in time for the West Indies. Might that person still want a say in selection, as Trevor Bayliss did in the summer of 2015 before taking charge?

Many players are going to be left anxiously awaiting their fate. Broad has had an unhappy tour. His omission from the first Test at the Gabba was probably a mistake, but it showed how low his stock had fallen; he was later omitted from the third Test after having little impact in the one game he played in Adelaide. It was after that game that Root was so critical of his bowling unit.

Broad may play this week in Sydney in place of Ollie Robinson, who may be tiring, but the success in Melbourne of James Anderson, the team’s other veteran bowler, has left Broad’s future looking more uncertain unless he can summon a big performance.

Bairstow in the past 36 months is averaging 21.32 from 36 innings with a highest score of 57, while Buttler in the past 12 months averages 25.21 with a best of 55. Both might lose out as wicketkeeping options in the West Indies to Ben Foakes and Sam Billings.

The Sunday Times