Buoyed by the strong performance this summer, England head coach Trevor Bayliss has made it clear that Joe Root & Co. are ready to fight it out in the Ashes Down Under.
The season saw Joe Root donning the captain’s hat for the first time, and the team management will be utterly delighted to see the new captain’s performance. Root led England to an impressive 3-1 win against South Africa which was England’s first Test series win against the Proteas at home. It was followed by the 2-1 win in the recently-concluded series against Windies.
The wins, nevertheless, raised some disturbing issues for England like the top-order’s constant struggles or the fielding but Bayliss is not paying too much heed to them as he said his team would go to Australia with just win in its mind.
“We’re not going over to make up the numbers. We are going to leave here with a view to win, simple as that. We’ve played some good cricket. At times we haven’t played great cricket but we are not the only team in the world that hasn’t played great cricket at times. The one thing this group has got is plenty of fight and character,” he said.
While England’s inability to continue the winning momentum on a couple of occasions during the season will be a worry for some it was not the same for Bayliss as he insisted the Aussies, who recently lost a Test against Bangladesh, are ‘far from being stable.’
“We’ve lost games but we’ve been able to come out the next game and play well and win. I think our opposition in the Ashes are far from being stable either. When it gets down to England versus Australia in an Ashes series, I don’t think any previous series are going to matter too much,” he said.
A big worry for England will be the form of their three newcomers – Mark Stoneman, Tom Westley, and Dawid Malan. The trio failed to impress this season, giving rise to speculations that they will find it tough to handle Australia’s formidable pace-attack on the bouncy tracks.
Talking about them, Bayliss said:
“That’s the big question with the three guys we’ve been speaking about. They’ve shown that they are good enough. Are they good enough for long enough, are they tough enough, especially for an Ashes series? We will be discussing other players we’ve had in the team. These three guys; it’ll be hard to go past them.”
And while Bayliss defended the newcomers and backed England to do well in the Ashes, he criticised England’s fielding. England dropped at least 14 chances against Windies which also played a significant part in their shocking loss at Headingley when the tourists chased down 322.
“The catching has been terrible, especially in the last couple of Tests,” he said. “Some of the catches we dropped were quite easy. To me, easy catches are usually down to concentration. They’re professional players and should be grabbing hold of some of those we’ve dropped.”