{"id":362699,"date":"2026-01-10T11:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T11:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/362699\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T11:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T11:36:13","slug":"ajmal-shahzad-appointed-as-head-coach-of-mcc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/362699\/","title":{"rendered":"Ajmal Shahzad appointed as Head Coach of MCC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tMCC has appointed Ajmal Shahzad to the position of Head Coach at the Club<\/p>\n<p>Shahzad, who played for England in all international formats of the game as well as representing several first-class counties, returns to MCC having worked at Lord\u2019s between 2019 and 2021, before leaving to become Assistant Coach (Bowling Lead) at Derbyshire CCC.<\/p>\n<p>After almost five years at Derbyshire working as a key part of their coaching setup, Shahzad has returned to Lord\u2019s to take up the position of Head Coach, a role which will lead and develop a coaching team to deliver best-in-class coaching experiences across all levels of the game, from participation programmes through to elite performance environments.<\/p>\n<p>The former Yorkshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and Sussex seamer turned to the coaching side of the game in 2017 when he ended his professional playing career.<\/p>\n<p>He will provide strategic and operational leadership for all MCC coaching activity delivered from the newly refurbished and rebranded Lord\u2019s Performance Centre, in alignment with the Club\u2019s overarching Cricket Strategy, due to launch in early February.<\/p>\n<p>Shahzad said: \u201cI\u2019m thrilled to be back at Lord\u2019s and working with our talented group of coaches. I hope that with my experience in the professional game, both as a player and a coach, will be of benefit and I am looking forward to helping both them and MCC make a difference across all levels of the game.<\/p>\n<p>Ricky Reynolds, Head of Programmes at MCC, said: \u201cWe are delighted to welcome Ajmal back to MCC. As an experienced coach, coming from a background of having played the game at the highest level, he will be able to develop an elite coaching framework that supports player development.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith the recent rebranding of the Lord\u2019s Performance Centre, we are seeking to ensure it is established as a world-leading hub for coaching, innovation and coach development, and this role will be central to that aim.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"article-image-mcc-(1).jpg\" height=\"1024px\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/article-image-mcc-(1).jpg\" title=\"article-image-mcc-(1).jpg\" width=\"684px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MCC has appointed Ajmal Shahzad to the position of Head Coach at the Club Shahzad, who played for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-362699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}