England are scrambling to put together an interim coaching team, selection panel and squad for their upcoming tour of West Indies with assistant coach Graham Thorpe the latest member of the management team to be sacked on Friday, after the managing director, Ashley Giles, and the head coach, Chris Silverwood.

Andrew Strauss, who has been bought in to replace Giles in the short term, confirmed that in all the upheaval, Joe Root will stay on as captain for the three-Test series. It is not clear who will be in his team. They need to appoint an interim coach, a panel to pick the squad, and the players by the back end of next week.

In short, it’s a scramble. “The only way we can look at it is to get through the West Indies tour, which is about five weeks on duty, and then there is some time after that to take a step back and think strategically about the needs of the England cricket team both now and over the next five to 10 years,” Strauss said. He has ruled himself out of taking on his old job as managing director in the long term, but in the next few weeks he is going to help plan the way forward for English Test cricket. He will look to restore some sort of national selector’s role after it was scrapped last year, and help appoint a new full-time managing director and head coach.

Strauss also said the ECB board are about to approve and appoint a panel to run “a full independent review into the role and structure of the first class game, with particular focus on its suitability to produce international cricketers”.

In the short term, the West Indies tour will be a clear opportunity for Root and the rest of the squad to prove they ought to be part of that future. “I’ve spoken to Joe, and his commitment to taking this side forward is absolutely clear,” said Strauss. “At this moment in time he is 100% the right person to take the team forward. At some stage in the future we will have a new managing director, a new head coach, they will look at things with fresh eyes. But for me he’s a great example to those young players and he needs our support right now.” At the same time, Strauss also put some pressure on the players to step up.

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see performances have been poor for the last 12 months, and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves,” Strauss said. “The players have to hold up their hands and accept they have to get better. They have the best possible example right there with them in the dressing room in Joe Root in terms of what world-class performance looks like. That has to be their ambition, to reach that level of performance. International cricket is a tough old gig and you have to have resilience, toughness, you have to want it. That is the challenge for those players.”

Root isn’t the only survivor. The ECB’s chief executive, Tom Harrison, is staying on too. “I’m not running away,” Harrison said. “I want to take English cricket back to a place where there’s some stability and calmness in the environment, and there’s a sense that we are heading in the right direction,” he continued. “I’m not saying I’m clinging on for grim death, that is not what I’m doing. I’m doing this because I think it’s the right thing for English cricket right now. And as soon as that is not the case, you will not have to push me.” Harrison said the game needs “consistency” while the ECB is looking to recruit a new chairperson.

Strauss now finds himself in the odd position of planning a “red-ball reset”, in part to counter-effect the “white-ball reset” he oversaw back in 2015. He was open-minded about exactly what it will involve. But it seems clear that it will include reappointing a national selector of some sort, and, quite possibly, splitting the international coaching roles between red- and white-ball cricket.

“The current structure put an impossible strain on the England head coach,” said Strauss. “I personally feel like someone who’s got an outside view, who can check and challenge the thoughts within the dressing room, is a healthy thing.” Beyond that, there’s the bigger question of England’s domestic structure.

“You can’t lump the Ashes defeat on the domestic game’s door, but I think it is a contributing factor,” Strauss said. “And what we need to do is best replicate the challenges of international cricket in our domestic game. That is very clear. I would say that I have spoken to a lot of people in and around the game over the last 18 months.

“I don’t think there are very many at all who believe the domestic structure is best suited to international cricketers. A lot of the analysis when you look at the international and domestic game backs that up as well. We need to be ambitious, we need to be bold and be prepared to be radical in the solution to those issues.”