Bayliss ready to ‘step up’ in dressing room

Trevor Bayliss has suggested he will take a more prominent role in the England dressing room over the final two Tests of the series against India.

Bayliss, England’s head coach, has generally been happy to leave team talks to the captain, Alastair Cook. But he is concerned by what he sees as England’s passive cricket in the last couple of Tests and is keen to encourage the batsmen to play what he sees as the “positive” cricket they demonstrated at the start of the series.

While it would be stretching a point to suggest that minor change of approach indicates a rift with Cook, it does seem fair to conclude that Bayliss wants to make certain the team are in no doubt about the way he wants them to play.

England scored at well over three an over in the drawn match Rajkot (3.36 in the first innings and 3.44 in the second). But then, in the second innings of the second Test in Visakhapatnam, Cook set the tone by taking 50 overs to put on an opening stand of 75 with Haseeb Hameed as England attempted to bat for the best part of five sessions to seal a draw.

But Bayliss clearly feels most of the team’s batsmen are at their best when they are given a clear license to attack and suggested that some indecision had led to their failures in the Mohali Test.

“The first three innings of this series we had a nice positive …

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