ENGLAND IN WOMEN’S WORLD CUP FINAL:
Gary KO rescues pair
TREVOR BAYLISS and Joe Root got a lucky break yesterday when Gary Ballance was ruled out of the third Test against South Africa with a busted finger.
It spares the pair axing the Yorkshireman (right), who has not impressed since his recall despite the England skipper’s backing for his former flat-mate.
His absence clears the way for either Surrey opener Mark Stoneman or Essex’s No.3 Tom Westley to be named in the squad for next week’s clash at The Oval.
Durham opener Keaton Jennings is likely to keep his place but could drop down the order depending on who gets the nod.
However, there looks to be no reprieve for Liam Dawson, who seems certain to be dropped after two ineffective performances, with Jake Ball set to return after recovering from a knee injury.
Bayliss found it difficult to conceal his anger after the feeble defeat at Trent Bridge and asked his players to take a good look at themselves and their approach to Test cricket.
The coach and his players had an “honest” exchange of views in the Trent Bridge dressing room on Monday.
Bayliss said: “Over the last couple of years I’ve been here, we’ve won one well, lost one well.
“So the positive out of that is we should come back and play pretty well next game. But we had a fairly honest discussion upstairs and it is a concern. “If you win one, I put the question to them, is it the way we approach the game in that second one? “Do we think we don’t have to do anything different? “It’s only them that will be able to say as a group or as individuals, does their mindset change? “We’ll go away over the next few days but when we get together again we’ll sit down and have another discussion about it. But from a consistency point of view, not just individually batting and bowling but as a team, we want to be consistently good.”