The ECB have announced the appointment of David Court as player identification lead, filling the vacancy left by Mo Bobat's promotion to the role of performance director in October.

Court, who will work closely with Bobat and with Ed Smith's selection panel, has spent the last four years at the FA as performance education lead, having previously worked for the ECB as a regional performance manager and for Surrey in various roles.

"I'm looking forward to continuing the excellent work done in player identification in recent years and supporting England's short, medium and long-term selection needs," Court said. "The prospect of leading the scouting team is exciting, as is working closely with the counties who work hard to develop players."

"I'm absolutely delighted to have somebody of David's calibre joining us as player identification lead," Bobat said. "It's great to be able to bring him back to the ECB for what is a crucial role within our men's pathway and I have no doubt that David's experiences within football over the last few years will add huge value to us as an organisation.

"We've made significant progress in how we identify players across every level of our international pathway and we're ambitious about firmly establishing ourselves as world-leading in this area. A key responsibility will be to work closely with our counties and through the new County Partnership Agreement (CPA), enhance the rigour of player identification structures and systems across the county game.

"David's knowledge of both cricket and talent identification, alongside his experience of leading talent identification and technical director programmes for the FA, make him the ideal candidate to help us realise those ambitions."