Where do England turn after Chris Silverwood’s departure?

Chris Silverwood has lost his job as England head coach, following director of men’s cricket Ashley Giles out of the door in the aftermath of the woeful Ashes campaign.

Here, PA answers some of the key questions around what it means and what happens next.

Not really. Both men have put in plenty of hard work in their respective roles and kept England’s exhausting show on the road during the unprecedented backdrop of a pandemic, but on a cricketing level things have been going backwards for some time. The Ashes always casts a disproportionately large shadow and this winter’s tour of Australia was set up as a make-or-break mission. England ended it one wicket away from a whitewash and were thoroughly outclassed leaving the writing on the wall.

Assistant coach Graham Thorpe remains vulnerable, with his credentials as a batting specialist seemingly unable to arrest England’s repeated collapses. A carelessly leaked video of an end-of-series drinking session may also count against him. Fellow deputy Paul Collingwood looks on firmer ground and the feeling is that captain Joe Root could be saved by a lack of well-credentialed contenders. ECB chief executive Tom Harrison has no shortage of critics too and has been fire-fighting over a variety of issues including The Hundred, racism in English cricket and his intention to take a lofty bonus despite a recent round of redundancies. He will appear alongside Giles’ temporary replacement Sir Andrew Strauss at a media conference on Friday and can expect a grilling.

Few in the game boast a CV as gleaming as the former Middlesex opener. He was the man who captained England to number one in the Test rankings and to the Holy Grail of a series win Down Under in 2010/11, while his first stint