Trevor Bayliss: ‘My demeanour is chilled but I get as nervous as anyone’
‘I’m not sure how many more of those I can take,” Trevor Bayliss says with a little laugh as he reflects on England’s thrilling yet stressful defeat of India at Edgbaston. The England coach leans forward with unexpected animation in the pavilion at Lord’s, where the second Test begins on Thursday. “It was some Test. Of course you ride every ball and in the close games it’s very nervy. On the surface my demeanour is chilled out but I get as nervous as anyone else. As a coach it’s a case of trying to look calm.”
In the deserted majesty of Lord’s, as an imperious Virat Kohli leads his squad out to practise, Bayliss emerges as a more open man than his persona indicates. In the three years since he became England’s head coach the Australian has remained a reserved presence. It sometimes seems as if no one is quite sure what Bayliss does, apart from spreading calm and encouraging his players to express themselves. The opaque nature of his work has been matched by inconsistencies on the field.
England have been transformed in white-ball cricket. They were a shambles when he took over in 2015, after they had been knocked out of the World Cup by Bangladesh, but England are now the No 1 side in one-day cricket. But they have lost 20 Tests under Bayliss, won 17 and drawn six.
The first Test against India nearly slipped away and at Lord’s they will be without their top all-rounder, Ben Stokes, who is on trial in Bristol after being involved in an incident last September that led to him being charged with affray – which he denies.
Did Bayliss talk to Stokes about the trial after he took four wickets to seal England’s victory last Saturday? “No – that’s outside our domain or influence. It might not be great for this Test but it’s
an opportunity for someone else to put their name up in lights.”
On more familiar terrain Bayliss is keen to tear up the assumption he favours white-ball cricket. “I’m very much a traditionalist. I like Test cricket more than white-ball cricket. So much whiteball stuff is played these days and we’re lucky England have 15 to 20 guys that could easily step in and shine. At Test level we haven’t got 11 players that have nailed down their positions, let alone 15 to 20. You go through stages where guys are more suited to one-day cricket.
“I’d like to see the county batters up their average. We’ve had a lot of good players averaging 35 to 40 at county level. If you want someone to average 40 to 50 in Test cricket, he’s got to average 50 to 60 at the level below. We haven’t got that right now but some good young players are coming through.”
The twenty-year-old Ollie Pope, who makes his Test debut at Lord’s, averages 85 in this season’s county games for Surrey. Bayliss is enthusiastic about Pope and, in an off-therecord discussion about young players, he emerges as a much more dynamic thinker than expected. But, for public consumption, he tempers excitement about Pope. “We can’t go over the top but he’s got the right attitude and good technique. He’s not overawed by pressure and he made a good hundred against Yorkshire with Joe [Root] and a few Test boys facing him.”
Notorious for watching little county cricket Bayliss admits he has not seen Pope bat in a first-class game. “I’ve just seen him in a couple of short-form games but our selectors and scouts are convinced he’ll be a good player.”
Under Ed Smith, the new head of selectors, England have made some striking and even controversial decisions – from choosing a trio of very young players in Dom Bess, Sam Curran and Pope to recalling Jos Buttler and Adil Rashid despite their lack of redball cricket. “It’s been very good,” Bayliss says. “Ed’s come in with some leftfield suggestions but he communicates extremely well and so far, so good.”
Has Smith made any suggestions that have seemed too left-field for Bayliss? The 55-year-old shakes his head. “I don’t think Ed would mind me saying we’ve had lots of chat about when is the right time to bring in someone very young. Do you wait until the team is winning or do you make the change even if we lose and are under pressure? Our views have not always been the same but, after chatting and listening, we’ve often gravitated to the other’s way of thinking.”
Bayliss will not say anything special to Pope before his debut. “The best coaches are the other 10 players. If you’re that 11th player you can get help from the coaches but you learn more about the game from experiencing it and watching your teammates.”
I read to Bayliss a withering comment George Dobell wrote about him on Cricinfo last year. “What does Bayliss do? If he’s just creating a relaxed environment, he could be replaced by a couple of scented candles, a yucca plant and a CD of ambient whale noises.”
Bayliss smiles. “It makes me think two things. One is that it shows he doesn’t know what’s going on behind the scenes but number two it was funny. I had a laugh about it.”
Does it bother him there is a perception he is merely ticking along as a coach? “At times, yes. But people don’t know the full picture and I actually promote that because it lets people know it doesn’t have to be structure and pressure, pressure, pressure all the time. Everyone starts playing cricket because they love it. Yes, there’re extra pressures now but let’s keep playing the game because we love it.”
Have there been times when Bayliss has spoken forcefully to a team which, in March, were 23 for eight against New Zealand before being defeated by an innings and 49 runs? “That was shock. You can’t believe it’s happening – whether you’re on the receiving or the good end of the stick. It was a low point and we’ve had a few stern words with them elsewhere. But I don’t believe in ranting and raving. If you get the message across in a calm way it’s more likely to sink in”
How has Bayliss’s light touch succeeded with his white-ball teams? “We changed the attitude and encouraged players to be more aggressive. And we started choosing batters suited to playing hard at the top. But, more than a big shift, it’s making proper use of the available tools.”
Bayliss and Paul Farbrace, his ebullient assistant, have complemented each other with England and Sri Lanka, whom they led to the 2011 World Cup final. “Everybody has weaknesses,” Bayliss says, “and you need to surround yourself with people who have strengths in areas you don’t.”
Where does Bayliss feel he is weakest as a coach? “I’m not sure it’s a weakness but I fly by the seat of my pants a little where Farby is very organised and writes everything down. Detail and structure is very important to him. I sometimes say players need to loosen up a little more. There’s not one perfect way to coach.”
Bayliss tells some good stories about his four years with Sri Lanka from 2007 to 2011 – at a time when it seemed impossible to drop Muttiah Muralitharan, the brilliant spin bowler who was approaching the end. “It was difficult. At one stage he was left out but he ended up back in the team. Your selection had to go to the federal sports minister for approval. A number of times you’d get a note saying suchand-such must be in the team. You’ve got to accept it and keep doing what you do well within that framework.”
This phlegmatic approach is obvious when I ask Bayliss if he was haunted by the terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka team in Lahore in 2009. “No, and I don’t know why,” he says of an incident in which six of his squad were injured and eight people were killed. “I remember thinking, ‘Keep your head down and arse up.’ Everybody was in the middle of the bus lying on the floor. Farby was behind me. A piece was sticking out of his arm and blood poured on to the floor. You expect screaming and yelling but everyone was very calm. There were guys saying, ‘Oh I’m hit’ and it was no louder than that. The driver got us out even through bullets were flying into the bus.”
A few months after he returned to Sydney, in 2011, Bayliss worked in a more mundane job as an estate agent. “I had applied for the New South Wales job again but they overlooked me. I was lost, thinking, ‘What do I do?’ A mate said: ‘Come work with me and sell some houses.’ It was interesting to do something completely different. I did that for five months and then the Big Bash started and I was back in cricket. I sold about five places but I wasn’t a salesman. I certainly worked out that cricket was my domain.”
English cricket will remain his specific domain until the end of next summer – when Bayliss hopes to lead England to their first World Cup victory in 50-over cricket and regain the Ashes. “Winning a home World Cup is very important. But it’s no more important than winning the Ashes. I hold them on equal terms. We’ve played good whiteball cricket over the last two years. Our challenge is to sustain that while we improve as a Test team. The aim is to win both next year, go out on a high and hopefully not go back to being an estate agent again.”