JOHN EMBUREY will continue as assistant coach to David Lloyd on England's tours this winter. Still threatening to retire, but still enjoying his one-day cricket for Northamptonshire, whose head coach he became last year, Emburey will support Lloyd in the one-day tournament in Sharjah before Christmas and in the tour of the West Indies in the new year.

The manager of the tour has yet to be appointed, but it will not be Graham Gooch or Mike Gatting, who will join forces as manager and coach respectively of the England A side on their tour of Kenya and South Africa. The team will leave in late December and return home in March, and will be chosen partly with possible replacements for the senior team in the Caribbean in mind.

Gooch and Gatting will probably both have retired from playing at the end of this season and their careers remain closely allied. They are the other two parts of David Graveney's three-man selection committee and they announced their retirement from Test cricket on the same day, during the Perth Test in February 1995.

Gooch had been asked to coach the A tour in Australia last winter but withdrew when his late father became ill and Gatting replaced him, with conspicuous success.

One of these three old friends, rivals and contemporaries will no doubt take over from Lloyd as England coach in time.

Phil Neale will be manager and John Abrahams coach for the England under-19 tour of South Africa, where they will also play in the Youth World Cup.