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Warwickshire have appointed Manchester City director of performance services James Thomas as their new performance director.
The former professional rugby union player, 42, succeeds former New Zealand Test player Gavin Larsen, 62, who quit in November “for personal reasons”.
Thomas, who the club say is “one of sport’s leading high-performance experts”, is originally from the North East and played his rugby at Leeds, but is now based in Shropshire, living in Shrewsbury.
He will have responsibility for the county’s men’s and women’s teams and also for the Birmingham Phoenix Hundred team, in which Warwickshire now hold a 51% share after Knighthead Capital, the American group co-owned by legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady, took a 49% share. Knighthead also own football neighbours Birmingham City.
“James is recognised in high-performance sport as a real talent,” said Warwickshire chief executive Stuart Cain. “We wanted someone with real strategic experience of creating world-class, successful performance environments.
“Having worked globally, he understands the impact of other leagues on domestic structures, something we really need to get our head around as franchise cricket develops.
“The review also demonstrated our need to modernise the way we recruit and prepare for games with greater use of data and analysis.
“James has some really interesting ideas and plenty of experience in this space which will help us build more accountability and structure in to how we bring in and develop players, as well as create winning teams.”
The appointment of Thomas, who is not due to join Warwickshire until June, completes a winter of behind-the-scenes change at Edgbaston.
In the wake of last season’s struggles in the County Championship – and a fourth successive T20 Blast quarter-final defeat – Warwickshire took five months before finally parting company with head coach Mark Robinson, 58, following a high performance review and replacing him with former Bears opener Ian Westwood, 42, before then bringing in former Kent coach Matt Walker, 51, as batting coach.
Thomas began as a tutor in sporting excellence at the University of Bath in September 2004 before moving to Welsh Athletics as a performance pathways manager in January 2006, then on to Great Britain Wheelchair Rugby in September 2009.
He then worked for the Welsh Amateur Boxing Association at Sport Wales National Centre from September 2011 to October 2014 before becoming performance pathway senior manager until 2017 with the British Judo Association, with whom he retained a sports consultancy post until 2022.
He then became performance director for five years with British Gymnastics from February 2017 to March 2022 and was also a GB performance directors strategic group member with UK Sport from April 2019 to March 2022 before taking up his current role with City, which encompasses their Football Group’s global network of 11 professional teams.
