Former England coach Trevor Bayliss urged the England cricket fraternity to show support to their captain Joe Root and the coach Chris Silverwood after the Ashes debacle. Bayliss pointed out the flaws in England’s domestic cricket and said that making someone a scapegoat won’t solve the problem.
Notable that Australia retained the Ashes after another comprehensive win at Melbourne as the hosts took an unassailable lead of 3-0 and the chances of a whitewash are looming large over England as they are struggling to compete in any of three departments.
However, Bayliss defended the coach and asked the ECB to address bigger issues to turn things around for England.
“They (Root and Silverwood) need support. There is no point badgering them. Being negative will only make things worse.I would like to see England rally around them now because things are not going to improve overnight. It is the system above those in the firing line that needs to be looked at and it will take time to put processes in place to change things. It’s a collective rather than blaming one or two people.” Bayliss wrote in his column for Dailymail.
Bayliss also pointed out that ECB needs to restructure their domestic set-up and prioritize first-class cricket. The former coach also believes that there are too many teams competing in the county championship and it lacks the quality if one compares it to Australia’s Sheffield Shield where only 6 teams participate in their premier first-class competition.
“I also remember asking why first-class cricket did not take place at better times during the English summer, with more white-ball at the start of the season. Certainly, that should be the case if Test cricket is going to be the priority now.” he wrote.
“Another question that will be raised again is: are there too many clubs in the English first-class system? If you had fewer teams then players would have to work harder to get into them and have a better technique to be able to score runs.” he further added.
Former New South Wales batter also stated how Australia was much better prepared for their Ashes challenge in England as opposed to Joe Root & Co. in this series. He pointed out that Cricket Australia experimented to use Dukes balls as part of their preparation and ECB could do the same in County Championship by using Kookaburra for some matches.
He also said that County teams helped Australia by giving them ahead of Ashes 2019 while Sheffield Shield teams don’t return the favour.
“I also found it surprising when I was in England to see Australian Test players being recruited by counties and effectively given perfect preparation in English conditions ahead of the Ashes. Marcus Harris and Marnus Labuschagne seemed to have played more county cricket before the first Test in 2019 than any England batter, yet there is no way Australian states would even consider employing top English players in first-class cricket.” He pointed out.
The fourth Ashes test will begin on January 5 in Sydney.
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