Alec Stewart has suggested that England ought to hand over responsibility for squad selection to the head coach, ditching the role of national selector in the process.

Currently, national selector Ed Smith is responsible for picking England squads while a combination of coach Chris Silverwood and captain Joe Root pick the playing XI from the initial squad.

Stewart, Surrey’s director of cricket, argues that the current system lacks accountability and restricts the coach from getting his team to play the way he wants them to.

“I have a problem and have done for a number of years about how the England squads are picked,” said Stewart on The Cricket Debate.  “In most other sports, one person is accountable for selection. In football, Gareth Southgate picks the England squad and he picks the XI. In rugby, Eddie Jones picks the England squad and the England XV. When it comes to cricket, it appears that Ed Smith picks the squad in consultation with the coach and with James Taylor, his co-selector, and the captain. But when it comes to picking the XI, who picks it?

“Is that Ed Smith, is that Chris Silverwood, is that the captain? There’s not enough accountability or consequence for good or bad selections. One person should be in charge. He has his own scouts, he has trusted allies whose judgements he implicitly trusts. When he makes a selection, it’s the right selection for him so he is accountable. So if it works, you pat him on the back and if it doesn’t, [he can say] ‘well it was my pick, I got it wrong, I’ll take the consequence.’”

“Chris Silverwood may not have got the squad he wanted yet if he did poorly and he got moved on from the role, not that I’m suggesting that, he could turn around and go ‘this is not the XI I wanted, this is not the squad I wanted’ yet the selector generally stays in his position for longer than the coach and the captain.

“I personally would have Chris Silverwood [select the squad]. I know you can easily say that he doesn’t see enough county cricket but if he has his scouts, as I call them ‘trusted scouts’, whose feedback he gets, plus he can see everything on a computer now at the press of a button, he sees it. He makes more judgements as to how he wants his team to play as compared to how two or three other people want his team to play.”