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Trevor Bayliss accepts offer to become new head coach of England cricket | Trevor Bayliss accepts offer to become new head coach of England cricket |
(about 2 hours later) | |
England are set to appoint an Australian as their new head coach but it is Trevor Bayliss, not Jason Gillespie, who is now understood to have accepted the position. | England are set to appoint an Australian as their new head coach but it is Trevor Bayliss, not Jason Gillespie, who is now understood to have accepted the position. |
Six weeks before the first Ashes Test, in Cardiff on 8 July, the director of England cricket, Andrew Strauss, has moved to recruit the New South Wales coach who was in the running for the job last year before Peter Moores was eventually appointed. | |
Since Moores was sacked this month, and after Strauss failed to convince his former Middlesex team-mate Justin Langer to leave his role at Western Australia, the title-winning Yorkshire head coach, Gillespie, had become the frontrunner and met the England and Wales Cricket Board twice last week. | |
But despite positive feedback from those conversations, it has now emerged that Bayliss has agreed to take over, with contact between the 52-year-old and the ECB having stepped up a gear over the weekend. The board has confirmed merely that it is in “exclusive negotiations” with its “preferred candidate” but Bayliss is believed to be travelling to London from Sydney to finalise terms before the official announcement. | |
Bayliss was initially lukewarm to the approach but has been swayed by a package that would see him double the money he earns as coach of New South Wales and the Indian Premier League side Kolkata Knight Riders, with reports in Australia claiming he could earn as much as £300,000 a year. | |
As well as those two jobs, Bayliss has been working as an adviser to the Australia coach, Darren Lehmann, even leading the Twenty20 side in their series with South Africa last November. The pair are now set to face off in his first Test series in charge of England. | |
The former batsman’s previous experience in one-day cricket stacks up alongside Strauss’s target to compete for the 2019 World Cup on home soil after the disastrous campaign this year that saw them fail to make the knockout stages. | |
Bayliss led Sri Lanka to the final of the competition in 2011, losing to India in Mumbai, but has since won the Indian Premier League twice with the Knight Riders in 2012 and 2014, as well as the inaugural Big Bash League with the Sydney Sixers in 2012. | Bayliss led Sri Lanka to the final of the competition in 2011, losing to India in Mumbai, but has since won the Indian Premier League twice with the Knight Riders in 2012 and 2014, as well as the inaugural Big Bash League with the Sydney Sixers in 2012. |
In first-class cricket he has overseen two victorious Sheffield Shield campaigns during two spells in charge of New South Wales, having played 58 first-class games for the state during a playing career that did not bring international recognition. | In first-class cricket he has overseen two victorious Sheffield Shield campaigns during two spells in charge of New South Wales, having played 58 first-class games for the state during a playing career that did not bring international recognition. |
Bayliss has previously worked with England’s current caretaker coach, Paul Farbrace, too, with both men on the Sri Lanka team bus that came under fire during the 2009 terrorist attack in Lahore. | |
Farbrace, who left that assistant role in 2009 to take over at Kent before spells at Yorkshire and Sri Lanka, is now expected to be retained by Bayliss and return to the No2 job he occupied under Moores. | Farbrace, who left that assistant role in 2009 to take over at Kent before spells at Yorkshire and Sri Lanka, is now expected to be retained by Bayliss and return to the No2 job he occupied under Moores. |
The news is a huge boost for Yorkshire as the club had been resigned to the fact that Gillespie, who led them to their first county championship title in 13 years last summer, would be moving on. Plans were already under way at Headingley for life without the 40-year-old but he will now continue there, with his job set to be combined with a winter role at Adelaide Strikers in the Big Bash. | |
New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum has worked under Bayliss in the Indian Premier League and believes he will be appreciated by the England players. | |
“He’s a champion fella, very relaxed in the background and I’m sure he’ll have a good relationship with Alastair Cook in Tests and Eoin Morgan in one-day cricket,” said McCullum. “I enjoyed playing with him and I’m sure the England guys will too. If he’s in Leeds [for Friday’s Headingley Test] I’ll have a beer with him.” |