US Edition 
Michael Vaughan rules himself out of England director of cricket job due to 'limitations' of role
Exclusive: Former England captain decides against pursuing new role - leaving path clear for Andrew Strauss to take charge
Michael Vaughan has confirmed his withdrawal from the running to be England’s new director of cricket citing concerns over the limitations of the role.
Vaughan held talks with the England & Wales Cricket Board last week after expressing an interest in learning more about the scope of the job created by the sacking of Paul Downton in April.
Paul Downton was sacked by the ECB in April
But after careful consideration the 2005 Ashes winning captain told the ECB at the end of last week he no longer wanted to be considered for the job, leaving the way clear for Andrew Strauss to be appointed possibly as early as the end of this week.
“I met Tom Harrison, the chief executive of the ECB, last week and had a really good long meeting to find out more about the new position of director of cricket that has been created by the board,” Vaughan told Telegraph Sport. “But after really good talks with Tom, and gaining an understanding about the role, I felt this was not the right time for me to move into such a position.
“At no stage was I offered the role or never reached the stage of talking about terms and conditions. We just had discussions about the job, how it was going to work and how the ECB see it operating. It will be a position of huge importance to the development of English cricket over the long term but during our talks the limitations of the role became clear to me and I realised it was not the right job for me at this moment in time.”
The ECB have stressed this week that there has been no formal job offer to any candidate. Harrison is due to return from a break in New York on Wednesday and Colin Graves does not formally take over as chairman until the end of next week.
Graves will delegate the decision to his chief executive and has told Harrison he must appoint the person he will feel most comfortable working with over the next five years, the term of office the new regime has been granted.
The director of cricket will be given a target of winning the World Cup and Ashes series in England in the bumper summer of 2019, which buys time to build the new culture within English cricket the ECB is so desperate to introduce.
Central to that will be a shake up of domestic cricket, particularly the Twenty20 cup.
The biggest challenge facing the director of cricket is to revolutionise England’s approach to one-day cricket which was so badly exposed during the recent World Cup. Balancing the need of the Test team with giving players a chance to experience the IPL has proved impossible in the past and will need innovative thinking from the man in charge.