Coach hopes England harness Headingley ‘hurt’
Bayliss confident of team bouncing back after shock loss to West Indies
England coach Trevor Bayliss is confident his “hurting” side will bounce back from their shock second Test defeat by the West Indies in next week’s series-decider at Lord’s.
The West Indies chased down a target of 322 on Tuesday’s fifth day at Headingley to win by five wickets and square the three-match contest at 1-1 following their innings and 209run thrashing in the first Test at Edgbaston.
Shai Hope led the way for the West Indies in Leeds. Having never before made a Test hundred, his 12th match at this level yielded two with the 23-year-old’s brilliant 118 not out on Tuesday coming just days after his first innings 147.
“They were hurting and to me that’s a good thing,” said Bayliss of England’s reaction to a disappointing defeat. “If the team is hurting after loss, it means something to a them. “I’m sure they will be fully focused and ready to put things right in the next Test,” the Australian added.
England captain Joe Root appeared to have made a welljudged declaration when, on his Yorkshire home ground, he closed the hosts’ second innings on 490 for eight late on Monday.
Bayliss backed his skipper’s move by saying: “I hope the result doesn’t change the way (Root) thinks about the game. In that situation, more times than not, we’ll win more than we lose.”
This was England’s second defeat in six Tests after they also lost the second match of the recent series at home to South Africa — with Bayliss’s men eventually taking a fourmatch contest 3-1.
At Headingley, England fell 169 runs behind on first innings but battled back with the bat second time around.
However, having dropped in-form third seamer Toby Roland-Jones essentially so allrounder Chris Woakes could get some overs under his belt ahead of the Ashes, England were twice undone in the field, especially on Tuesday when they only got halfway to taking the 10 second-innings wickets they needed to go 2-0 up.
Lot of character
“Batting was probably a little more difficult than it originally looked although it was still a decent wicket. To a certain degree, the (batsmen) learnt their lesson from the first innings. I thought they showed a lot of character,” said Bayliss.
“When we bowled, they were a little bit two sides of the wicket and a little bit short.
“We seemed to be fairly frustrated throughout that first bowling innings and I think that held over into the second innings. It looked like we were under a bit of pressure and got frustrated when it wasn’t quite happening for us.”
He added: “That doesn’t happen all that often. But it happens in the game of cricket every now and again and it happened on this occasion.”
England have announced an unchanged 13-man squad for the third Test. Now Mark Stoneman, Tom Westley and Dawid Malan are all in line for another chance to cement their top-order places ahead of the Ashes tour of Australia.
Westley was twice out in single figures at Headingley but Stoneman and Malan both made second-innings fifties.
“Certainly, Mark looks like a tough type of player to me,” Bayliss said. “He looks like he’s ready for a scrap the whole time but, when the bad ball comes along, he is able to put it away.”