Rob Key will be unveiled as the new managing director of England men’s cricket next week, and will be charged with overseeing huge changes to the English game in the months ahead.

Key, who played 15 Test matches for England, is finalising negotiations to take up the role. This will entail him leaving Sky Sports, where he has been a popular commentator since 2015. 

During his playing career, Key was a long-time and well-regarded captain of Kent. He is known for his deep knowledge of the county game.

One of Key’s first tasks will be to appoint a successor to Joe Root, who has resigned as Test captain. After the Ashes defeat last winter, Key had previously called on Root to leave as captain.

The new managing director will have a busy in-tray. England currently do not have a captain, a head coach – with separate head coaches for the red and white-ball sides likely – and have also been without a national selector since the role was abolished last year.

Key has previously indicated that he believes that England should have both split head coaches and a separate national selector.

“In this new era, we will probably go for a split coaching set-up with one coach for Test cricket and one for white-ball cricket, while we’ll probably have some form of selection panel back,” Key said on Sky Sports in January. 

He was heavily critical of Ashley Giles’s decision to invest so much power in Chris Silverwood, who combined being head coach in both formats with the selector, saying that Silverwood was “given an impossible task”.

A series of strong candidates for the role have either withdrawn, as in the case of Marcus North – who pulled out for family reasons this week – or declined to apply, as in the case of Alec Stewart, Ed Smith and Mike Hesson. The relative lack of interest in the role illustrates the attraction of other jobs in the sport, especially working in the Indian Premier League or in commentary.

While the bulk of his post-playing career has been devoted to broadcasting, Key has also had a stint on the ECB’s cricket committee, which advises the governing body’s board on playing matters.

The new managing director will be strongly involved in the forthcoming high-performance review of English cricket, led by Sir Andrew Strauss.

Though Strauss is stepping away from the role of managing director, which he has held on an interim basis since Giles was sacked in February, he will continue to be involved in the English game, through the high-performance review and as chair of the ECB cricket committee.