FARBRACE WANTS A RUTHLESS ENGLAND
PAUL FARBRACE has called for England to be more ruthless after they allowed New Zealand to come from behind and draw the Test series — just as they let the West Indies do last month. The stand-in coach admitted: ‘We seem to slip off the gas a bit,’ after a Headingley Test in which the New Zealanders romped to a series-levelling 199-run win. Farbrace, who will preside over the one-day series — starting in Birmingham on Tuesday — before passing the reins to Trevor Bayliss, said: ‘We have said now for a few series that we have had opportunities to win. ‘In the West Indies we should have been 2-0 going into the last game, and it allowed them to come back into it. In this series, though, ruthlessness comes from doing the basics right. ‘As soon as we slightly missed line and length, they whacked it for four and then our bowlers were under pressure. ‘When you are on top you have to make it count. We haven’t quite done that. We seem to slip off the gas a bit and let the opposition back in. ‘When they started playing lively shots we went away from the discipline, holding a line and owning the top of off stump. We didn’t do that enough and that gave them runs in both innings.’ England have two goals on their horizon: five one-day games and a Twenty20 international against New Zealand followed by Australia and the Ashes, which begin in Cardiff on July 8. Bayliss has already discussed the one-dayers with Farbrace as England seek to put in place an aggressive team capable of challenging for the Champions Trophy in 2017 and the World Cup two years later — both staged in this country. Farbrace added: ‘The message will be that you’ve been selected because of the way you play. You’ve got to do exactly the same at international level. The players who have the guts to do that and let themselves go are the people that make a success of it.’