The England head coach, Trevor Bayliss, praised the captaincy of Alastair Cook but warned his players that Australia will be hurting from their crushing defeat inside four days in Cardiff and will come back hard at them in the second Test at Lord’s on Thursday.
Bayliss, in his first match in charge, oversaw a 169-run victory that has continued an upturn in fortunes for the senior men’s side this summer but he was quick to offer a cautious reminder that his fellow countrymen should not be written off on the back of one performance.
“Australia will be hurting. They don’t like losing,” said Bayliss, who started in the job at the end of last month. “They have a proud record and losing will mean they come out in the next game trying to prove a point and to make up for their performance in this match. We are going to have to be on our game to win more matches from now.
“I know a lot of the guys in the Australian team very well and I felt for them a little bit,” he later told BBC Radio Five Live. “This is when they come out and play their hardest and their toughest and when they are at their best. The next game at Lord’s should be a cracker.”
Of Cook he said: “I think that the decision to stick with Alastair has been justified because his captaincy [in the first Test] was fantastic.”
There was no question delivered on a pre-match promise to empower his young side after seeing his position repeatedly questioned in the past 18 months since England’s 5-0 whitewash defeat in Australia.
Andrew Strauss shored up the role of his former opening partner at the start of the summer while naming Joe Root as vice-captain when he took over as director of England Bayliss believes those calls have been vindicated. “Joe Root is the vice-captain and I’m sure will do a good job in the future some time,” he said. “It may be a little early for him as yet but hHe’s been given the job as vice-captain to learn.” cricket. Through this match Root has risen to fourth in the ICC’s world batting rankings while Australia’s Steve Smith has lost top spot to South Africa’s AB de Villiers.
Australia came into the five-Test series as strong favourites but now face greater selection headaches than England, who named an unchanged 13-man squad on Sunday morning in which the unused Steven Finn and Adil Rashid are retained.
The tourists have seen the wicketkeeper Brad Haddin and the all-rounder Shane Watson criticised for their performances in Cardiff but are trying to remain upbeat about the fitness of their attack spearhead Mitchell Starc, who needed injections to mask pain in his right ankle. “Mitchell experienced some pain in the back of his right ankle during the Test match which is common with fast bowlers,” said the the team physio, Alex Kountouris on Sunday. “He was in discomfort while bowling but since then has improved significantly. We will monitor him over the next few days but the plan is for him to take part in some light training and we are hopeful he will be available for selection for the second Test”
On their XI for Lord’s Darren Lehmann, the Australia head coach, admitted Watson’s two dismissals in Cardiff – both lbw – were a cause for concern and that his fellow all-rounder, Mitchell Marsh, was pushing hard following centuries in both of their tour warm-ups. Asked about Watson’s leg-before issues, Lehmann replied: “He’ll be disappointed with that and so are we. [Marsh] is very close. So it’s going to be a tight call leading into the second Test.”
Lehmann also reiterated his frustration at the slow pitch in Cardiff, which tempered the threat of Mitchell Johnson, but he is not expecting much improvement at Lord’s. “Everyone talks about it – yes, we’d love a bit more pace,” he added. “That would be good but we’re not going to get it, so there’s no point asking.”
