Mentor backs his protégé ... and England

Now that he’s taken up the reins of a job he didn’t actively seek, Trevor Bayliss’s foremost priority is to divest the responsibility for decision-making back to the players he first met in Spain over the weekend.

Bayliss, the former New South Wales batsman who coached the Blues and the Sydney Sixers as well as a successful stint with Sri Lanka, yesterday fulfilled the first of what will be sporadic engagements with the media under the guise of announcing his England squad for next week’s opening Ashes Test.

With his greying hair closely cropped and face reflecting the glow of Iberian sun so beloved by Brits heading to the Continent, the 52-year-old in his wire-framed glasses carried the air of a Western Plains farmer as much as coach of one of the world’s best-resourced cricket teams.

It’s a measure of what Bayliss brings to the role that has found itself in a state of flux and searing scrutiny since Andy Flower – the coach who took England to the top of the world in Test and ODI rankings – became a victim of the five-nil Ashes whitewash in Australia 18 months ago.

A former teammate of Steve Waugh’s, Bayliss is not altogether comfortable with being a front man in the media spotlight but he does share the former Australia captain’s view that the way to get the optimum from cricketers is to not overload them with instructions and just back them to do their job.

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The same philosophy applies to the way England, which under Flower and captain Alastair Cook successfully clawed their way up the rankings ladders by playing low-risk, attritional cricket, need not to embrace the innovative, attacking mentality that the rest of the Test-playing world is employing.

As Bayliss points out, it’s not as prescriptive as simply telling players to go out and flay deliveries inside-out over extra cover they might otherwise have stoutly defended.

To use the jargon favoured by middle managers and social services, it’s about ‘empowering’ individuals to have faith in their capacity to make the right decision at the appropriate game situation.

“If you look around the cricket world the teams that are doing well in all forms of the game, even in Test cricket, they’re playing a good positive brand of cricket and showing intent,” Bayliss said at yesterday’s media get together at Lord’s.

“Being positive and aggressive doesn’t mean going out trying to score fours and sixes, it means having a good positive mindset.

“(Being) mentally aware of what’s going on around you and when that happens, when the bad ball comes you do hit it for four and six rather than just trying to survive for example.

“Or just trying to go for no runs when you’re bowling, you’re much better off I think, trying to take wickets.”

While he didn’t say it, that awareness might also extend to what players trot out when a microphone is plonked under their nose lest they offer a perspective at odds with what the new coach is looking to achieve.

That’s the interpretation that could be extrapolated from fast bowler Stuart Broad’s recent assertion, admittedly offered as a deliberately newsworthy sound bite in the phoney verbal sparring that precedes most events of significance, that Australia elevating Steve Smith to number three was good news to England.

Having played a pivotal role in Smith’s elevation to the captaincy with the Sydney Sixers and his rise up the order for NSW, Bayliss provided a less incendiary counter view to that of his new-ball bowler, as echoed by former England spinner Graeme Swann.

"I think he's up to it,” Bayliss said matter-of-factly when asked is Smith was up to the task of batting at three in an Ashes series.

“We tried to get him to bat number three (for the Blues) two seasons ago, I thought that batting him at number three in four-day cricket for New South Wales would set him up well whether he was batting at five or six for Australia.

“Then the Australian players came back (from international duties) and those things changed.

“But he has batted at number three last season when he did play for us and in the Shield final we won two years ago.”

Image Id: ~/media/E1C93E3D1EDB41BB89DFB4778E3EB41E

Smith batted at No.3 under Bayliss in the 2013-14 Shield final // Getty Images

Having worked closely with the 26-year-old who has risen to the top of the world Test batting rankings, Bayliss is understandably an admirer of Smith and his homespun technique that seems to be the core of the England current and past players’ critiques.

That is partly driven by the fact that despite his comparative youth, Smith practices that self-awareness, game awareness mantra that Bayliss will be preaching.

“He's a competitor isn't he?” Bayliss said, his sun-kissed face glowing further and with almost fatherly pride.

“We all know his technique is not out of the textbook but he's a competitor.

“He reads the game and he works out a way with his technique to score runs.

“If you do that and you're confident in your ability which he is ... he's now the world's best batter.

“He's the type of player that, faced with any challenges he will be able to work it out.

“From England's point of view, it will be a case of hopefully getting him into that position where he does have to work something else out and then hopefully staying one step ahead of him.

“But he's obviously only one of a number of dangers in the Australian set-up.”

It’s his knowledge of the Australian set-up that adds another element of intrigue to the Ashes series that begins in Cardiff next Wednesday.

Just how much the intelligence he’s brought with him from Sydney and his former roles – including a stint as Australia’s T20 coach last summer – will be revealed in the plans that England formulate for their rivals batters and bowlers.

More instructive and even more crucial will be his players’ ability to take those plans from the whiteboard to the cut strip.

“I’ve done it before with Sri Lanka, and with some success as well against Australia, and the guys I do know in the Australian team will understand it,” Bayliss said in response to the question about the novelty figure of him being in the home team’s dressing room for a series in Britain.

“It’s a little bit like playing in the backyard years ago.

“Playing against your mates and your brothers, it was the toughest competition but at the end of the day you went off together and with that respect and I’m sure that will happen.

“They understand that I’ll be trying to do a job for the team I’m coaching and I understand they’re trying to do their utmost to win for their team as well.”

The other question Bayliss will fend off with regularity – or at least one or the other retires – is that of whether exiled batsman Kevin Pietersen should be considered for England’s crammed Test program.

Yesterday, he wisely patted it harmlessly away, pointing out that as things stand Pietersen is not available for selection and his only concern are the players who are.

As to whether it’s an issue that could tinge his tenure in the way that it overshadowed those of Flower and his successor Peter Moores before him.

But the understated, economically spoken career coach shows the steel that has carried him and his team to success in international and domestic competitions over the past decade, and why England sought him out when he hadn’t given the position deep thought.

“I don’t hold any fear I suppose when it comes to anything to do with cricket,” Bayliss said.

“I’ll just get on with it and deal with it in my own way.

“That’s the position we’re in at the moment and luckily or thankfully they seem to be in a pretty good place at the moment with some good young talent coming through.

“And for any (international) team to be successful over a long period of time you need a good strong squad and certainly blooding those younger players against New Zealand has provided a good sign to the future.”

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