by Jimmy Anderson says joining Lancashire will take priority over any coaching opportunities with England this summer after agreeing a new one-year deal to play in the County Championship and T20 Blast.
The 42-year-old has worked as a consultant coach for England since his forced retirement from Test cricket last summer and will be part of Brendon McCullum’s squad for the Champions Trophy in Pakistan next month.
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However, Anderson has also declared his intention to continue playing and, after missing out on a deal in the Indian Premier League, has now agreed a season-long deal with his boyhood club which will include their bid to move out of Division Two after the last. relegation of the year.
“I’ll play as much as I really can,” Anderson told the BBC Tailenders podcast. “As much as I enjoyed coaching, I’ll see how it fits this summer.” But as long as I’m still able to play – fit enough and young enough – I want to do it. I can’t do this in three years. [Playing for Lancashire] will take precedence over anything else this summer.
Mark Chilton, Lancashire’s director of cricket, said: “As things stand, he is fully committed to the county’s season, both for the County Championship and the Blast, and while we all recognize that he will have other opportunities, he has made it clear. playing is his first priority.
“Being able to share a dressing room with England’s all-time leading wicket-taker and one of cricket’s greatest players is incredible for our team.”
Anderson, who has been coaching independently with England, is currently in Abu Dhabi working with seamers Jofra Archer, Mark Wood, Gus Atkinson and Brydon Carse ahead of India’s white-ball tour which begins next week and will serve as a warm-up for the eight-team Champions Trophy.
Warwickshire have signed Australian Beau Webster for the first three months of the summer following the all-rounder’s recent Test debut against India in Sydney.
Meanwhile, the ECB has again urged the International Cricket Council to show greater support for Afghan women cricketers at a meeting of the organisation’s chief executive committee in Dubai. Richard Gould, the ECB chief executive who wrote to the ICC last week, and his deputy Clare Connor both sit on the committee, whose meeting ended without any decision being taken, less than six weeks old. before the first match of the Afghanistan men’s team. Champions Trophy meeting in Karachi.
Last week, a group of more than 160 parliamentarians called on the ECB to boycott England’s match against Afghanistan in the Champions Trophy, due to be played in Lahore on February 26, due to the attack on Taliban regime against women’s rights. “We must oppose gender apartheid and we implore the ECB to send a strong message of solidarity and hope to Afghan women and girls so that their suffering has not been neglected,” reads the statement. letter.
But the ECB has made it clear that it prefers not to act in isolation. “While there has been no consensus on further international actions within the ICC, the ECB will continue to actively advocate for such measures,” Gould wrote last week. “A coordinated ICC-wide approach would have far more impact than unilateral actions by individual members. »
Gould kept his promise to “continue to actively advocate for action” at Monday’s meeting, even though decisive action was never possible: according to his terms of reference, the business leaders’ committee – which has 20 members, including Connor, the former England captain, The ECB’s deputy chief executive and head of the ICC women’s cricket committee is the only woman who exists largely to advise the board administration of the ICC, and no decision has been made or resolution drafted on the matter.
Among other proposals, the ECB called on the ICC to support exiled Afghan players, most of them based in Melbourne, by reallocating some of the funds they would usually send to the Afghanistan Cricket Council. The reallocation of this funding is due to be discussed by the women’s cricket committee at its meeting in March.
