The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) employee is to take over as performance director at UK Sport.

The previous incumbent, Peter Keen, is widely seen as one of the key figures behind Great Britain's startlingly strong performances at each of the last two Summer Olympic Games – Beijing 2008 and London 2012.

Timson is currently head of the England development programme and science and medicine at the ECB.

England's cricket teams have shown a marked improvement in consistency in recent seasons, although the men's Test side was deposed from the number-one ranking by South Africa this summer.

Prior to the ECB, Timson spent six years as performance director of British Skeleton – a rare British Winter Olympics success story in recent times, via athletes such as Amy Williams, a gold medallist two years ago in Vancouver.

In his new role, Timson will shape the future of the UK's enviably well-funded high performance system to sustain British Olympic and Paralympic success at Sochi in 2014, Rio de Janeiro two years later and beyond.

Simon Timson led Shelley Rudman (R) to a silver medal in the women's skeleton single at Turin 2006

He said he was "delighted" to be taking up the role "at such an exciting time, with such a strong performance in London to build upon."

Baroness Sue Campbell, chair of UK Sport, described London 2012 as "a huge milestone on this incredible journey that British high performance sport is on".

In Timson, she believed, "we have found the perfect person to build on this success and deliver a meaningful legacy for our future elite athletes".

Hugh Robertson, sports minister, said the new appointee had "an excellent track record both in high performance sport and academically in sports science".

Keen, who stood down as performance director in May, is now UK Sport's special adviser for performance.

Timson is to take up his new role in January.

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