Bayliss to quit head coach job next year
Australian to leave after Ashes and World Cup Essex’s Silverwood in frame for England post
Trevor Bayliss has confirmed he will step down as England head coach next year but will start the process of rebuilding the team for the next tour to Australia.
Bayliss has told Andrew Strauss, England’s director of cricket, that he will leave his post at the end of his contract in September 2019 after the next home Ashes series and the World Cup.
It was always a natural point to break with Bayliss, who is secure in his job despite losing 18 Test matches out of 38 since taking over from Peter Moores in July 2015.
Bayliss has secured his position by improving the white-ball team, leading England to the World Twenty20 final and Champions Trophy semi-final. The England and Wales Cricket Board is also reluctant at this stage to split the coaching role and appoint a separate new head of the Test team.
Succession planning starts now, however. Chris Silverwood has joined as fast-bowling coach. He arrived in Australia with the one-day squad during the fifth Test, and is a leading candidate to take over from Bayliss next year. Silverwood led unfancied Essex to the title last season and is now in a position to build his reputation in the international set-up. There will also be pressure on the ECB to appoint an English coach after employing Bayliss.
Paul Collingwood, who has been assistant coach in Australia, will also be a strong candidate.
If England were to make a change it would have to happen now. Waiting until the end of next summer to remove Bayliss would risk unsettling the one-day team less than a year before the World Cup.
“I told Strauss 12 months ago that I will be finishing up after September 2019. I have never been anywhere longer than four or five years,” said Bayliss. “I think after four or five years, it is time to move on whether you are doing well or not. New voice, that type of thing. I want to leave having helped England into a position of strength going forward, not just look after results for me. It has never been about me. It is about the team you are working for and making them as good as possible in the future.”
Bayliss retains the support of the team and Colin Graves, the chairman of the ECB, told The Daily Telegraph in the aftermath of the defeat in Sydney that he has the board’s backing to carry on.
Graves ruled out a “witch hunt” and the kind of blood-letting that followed the last Ashes defeat in Australia, when Kevin Pietersen was sacked and Moores replaced Andy Flower as head coach.
England have delayed selecting the squad for the New Zealand Test series by 24 hours because of the illness that laid Joe Root low in Sydney, which has prevented him joining a teleconference call with the selectors. James Vince and Mark Stoneman are poised to keep their places, with reserve batsman Gary Ballance likely to be dropped.
“I think people like Stoneman and Vince probably get another couple of games to show us what they’ve got,” said Bayliss. “At times during this series, against close to the best bowling attack in the world in their home conditions, they have shown they can play a bit. At the top level it is about making big scores, not fifties, 20s and 30s.”
Rebuilding will begin after the winter ahead of the Test series against Pakistan this summer. Haseeb Hameed, Keaton Jennings, Nick Gubbins, Liam Livingstone and Joe Clarke are batsmen waiting for a chance. Josh Tongue, George Garton and Jamie Overton are young pacemen on England’s radar.
“It’s about slowly getting them [new players] involved, filtering them into the team when positions become available or when they force their way in,” said Bayliss. “It’s not going to be an overnight success. If you bring four young blokes into the team, it will be a slower process as they learn what the international game is about.”
Ricky Ponting has been appointed Australia’s assistant coach for the Twenty20 tri-series against England and New Zealand, the next step to replacing Darren Lehmann as head coach. Lehmann will step down at the same time as Bayliss after the 2019 Ashes in England.