Yorkshire target Darren Lehmann and Chris Silverwood, as they look to add two ex-Ashes coaches

Yorkshire are targeting Darren Lehmann and Chris Silverwood as they look to appoint a new management team at Headingley.

The two ex-Ashes coaches are frontrunners for the positions of director of cricket and head coach after Ottis Gibson - incumbent in both roles - was told his contract will be terminated in September.

Both men are former Yorkshire players and are understood to have been identified by the three-man cricket panel of Michael Vaughan, Gavin Hamilton and Ashley Metcalfe currently advising club chair Colin Graves.

Anthony McGrath is also thought to have been of interest, but was promoted to director of cricket in an Essex restructure earlier this week.

Lehmann, 54, spent five years as Australia coach, but resigned in the wake of the team’s ball-tampering scandal and moved into domestic cricket, taking charge of the Leeds-based Northern Superchargers for the inaugural Hundred season.

He resigned two years ago as he looked to reduce his hands-on work following a heart attack on his 50th birthday, but could be enticed back by a job upstairs at Yorkshire, where he is regarded as the club’s best ever overseas player.

Silverwood, 49, has just returned to the UK from a two-year stint with Sri Lanka after being replaced at the England helm by Brendon McCullum in 2022. He has taken up an assistant coach role with Oval Invincibles over the next four weeks in a sign that a break following his time on the international circuit is not on his agenda.

Mail Sport can reveal that the Yorkshire players were told immediately after Friday night’s failure to defeat Nottinghamshire and seal a quarter-final place in the Vitality Blast that Gibson, 55, would be leaving the club at the end of the season.

Former West Indies and South Africa coach Gibson’s tenure has been challenging to say the least: arriving alongside director of cricket Darren Gough in 2022 with the club in turmoil following the mass sacking of former staff, they were relegated on the final afternoon of the season.

Promotion hopes in 2023 were obliterated when a 48-point penalty imposed on the club last July for their handling of the Azeem Rafiq racism scandal plunged them to the bottom of Division Two.

This year, Yorkshire are well placed n the County Championship after two innings victories in their two most recent outings took them to within four points of second place with five fixtures remaining, but austerity measures triggered by the most recent £2.7million annual loss compounding Headingley’s huge debts have meant Gibson has combined both director of cricket and head coach roles since Gough’s departure in April and overseas player recruitment has been limited.