England to replace Trevor Bayliss with one head coach rather than splitting red and white-ball roles
England plan to replace Trevor Bayliss with one head coach, rather than split the roles between red and white-ball specialists. “My feelings are now 99.9 per cent that we should have one coach,” said Ashley Giles, England’s new director of red cricket.
Giles plans to create a new coaching structure in the England team after the departure of assistant coach Paul Farbrace, who leaves after the series in the West Indies to take up Giles’s old position as director of sport at Warwickshire.
He envisages having three coaches share the functions of assistant between them. Giles confirmed that Paul Collingwood would be elevated to one of these roles for the World Cup, working in tandem with Graham Thorpe and Chris Silverwood - the batting and bowling coaches for the limited-overs team.
“I see it as one guy in charge - and be prepared for time off - and perhaps three assistant coaches, not just one, that helps share the burden. The top man has different voices to go to,” said Giles.
“I’d like those guys to work together and share that burden. One assistant puts pressure on him and communication. The structure starts now.”
Giles hopes that there will be continuity in the England set-up after Bayliss’ departure, which will be after the summer Ashes series.
“The most important thing is for someone to fit in our culture, Joe [Root], Morgs [Eoin Morgan], our senior players - that has to continue, we have to bed that in. Whoever comes has to fit with that, not the football mentality of a proper clear-out.”
Thoughts have not yet turned to who would replace Bayliss, though Giles believes Silverwood, who previously won the County Championship as Essex coach, could be a strong contender. “I think Chris Silverwood could do it,“ he said. “He’s got a very nice way about him hasn’t he? He’s a tough bloke, got a fair amount of discipline, communicates really well.”
England may delay the formal process of replacing Bayliss until after the summer. “What we don’t want is this massive distraction of a process during the World Cup or the Ashes,” Giles explained. “The whole focus for the team has to be on this summer and my job is to remove some of that interference.”
Ideally, Giles said, the coach would be English. “We need the best bloke to do it but it would be nice at some point for us to have an English head coach. We’ve had one absolute head – I was white-ball head – in 20 years and he’s done it twice. That’s not great for our coach development.”
Giles said one of his roles was to ensure greater focus on the Test team. “There’s been a lot of focus on our white-ball cricket and that’s been the right thing to do but given the importance to Test cricket to us, and the world Test championship, we do need to swing that pendulum back nearer the middle.”
Building a culture in the England team, to outlast any single individual, is Giles’s biggest ambition, something clarified by discussions with Gareth Southgate.
“I spoke to Gareth last year a couple of times and was incredibly impressed with the stuff he's done. The really important thing to me is that we bed in this culture piece. In the 20 years I've been involved it's been a word we've used a lot and it's never really happened. You put words on the world, say 'we're gonna do this or that' but you really need to embed it. We've really got a chance this time because the players are leading it. That's unusual.”
Compared with the ODI team, the Test side was “immature,” Giles said. “By that I mean it's not fulfilled its potential.” Previously a selector himself, he praised Ed Smith’s work in 2018, but said, “In hindsight, which is a wonderful thing, we got a bit funky in the first West Indies Test.
“Some decisions with regard to selection have been a little bit forced because of where we are, particularly at the top of the order. But I'm very confident in what Ed does.”
