I’m in the firing line
AUSSIE ADMITS HE IS FIGHTING TO SAVE JOB
TREVOR BAYLISS accepts his position as Test coach will be under threat should England crash to another damaging defeat by Pakistan in the second Test, but insists he is still the best man for the job.
England will be playing for Bayliss’s future at Headingley on Friday after their shocking performance in the first Test led to their seventh defeat in 10 games and intense scrutiny on the coach’s position.
Bayliss, an outstanding success with the white-ball teams, needs Joe Root’s side to hit back and take a share of this two-Test series to avoid his position as coach in all three formats becoming close to untenable.
‘I can obviously understand the questions that are asked, that’s the lot of the coach, and if someone higher up makes that decision so be it,’ said Bayliss. ‘But I certainly want to carry on. I’ve committed to September 2019 and I don’t know how anything can be done differently. I enjoy doing the job and I think the messages we’re giving the guys are the right ones.’
The worry for Bayliss is that, unlike with Eoin Morgan’s limited- overs teams, his message at Test level does not seem to be getting through. It is an observation he accepts as he battles this week to save his job.
‘The message is obviously not getting through enough,’ admitted Bayliss. ‘You almost throw your hands up sometimes but what else can you do? We continually deliver our message.
‘We keep making the same mistakes. It’s not as if we can’t do it, we’ve just got to be better and more consistent. From a coaching point of view we can only keep on hitting those points and working on those things in the nets.
‘Hopefully they will start sinking in because it’s taking longer than we would have liked.’
England have a habit of hitting back after a bad performance, as they did after last year’s shocker against South Africa at Trent Bridge, and they need to come up with the goods at Leeds.
‘We have shown in the past when we haven’t played very well that we’ve pulled our finger out in the next game and played well,’ said Bayliss. ‘That will be the challenge now. I’d be expecting them to be embarrassed about the way we played in this game and the next one will be better.’
England have retained their squad for the second Test with the exception of putting the desperately out- of-form Mark Stoneman out of his misery, replacing him with Keaton Jennings.
It is the 13th time England have changed their openers since the retirement of Andrew Strauss, with Jennings, who has made a strong start to his career with Lancashire after his move from Durham, joining Alastair Cook for a second time.
Jennings, 25, returns for the first time since facing his native South Africa last year after scoring two centuries and averaging 43.79 for Lancashire this season. He is called up now because it is perceived Middlesex’s Nick Gubbins is not ready against spin at the highest level.
‘Keaton showed a strong temperament in scoring a hundred on Test debut against India and has found good form in county cricket,’ said national selector Ed Smith.