IT'S a long time since Craig Wright first met Trevor Bayliss in the clubhouse at West of Scotland's Hamilton Crescent ground, but the pair have remained close friends in the intervening period.
Wright, the former Scottish captain and current assistant coach of his country, remembers Bayliss, who has just been appointed the new England coach, as a quietly spoken character, somebody whose ability to motivate owed more to the carrot than the stick, and who displayed a beetle-browed intelligence and intuition to nurturing talent during his time in Scotland at the end of the 1980s.
The 52-year-old Bayliss was an impressive batsman and prodigious run-scorer, both in New South Wales and throughout his period on the Caledonian circuit. Yet, as Wright attested, perhaps more importantly, in terms of his elevation to the England job, after successful spells at Sri Lanka, the Sydney Sixers and the Kolkata Knight Riders, he is somebody without a shred of ego or "look at me" prima-donnaism. And that quality explains why Wright believes the ECB have eventually made a great appointment after their winter of discontent.
"I've stayed pretty close to Trevor, because he has so many fine qualities and he helped me so much, whether at West or when I went out to Penrith [in Australia] for a couple of winters in the early stages of my career," said Wright. "He is an intelligent man, somebody who loves the sport and who has real integrity, and you can see from what he has achieved wherever he has travelled that he has managed to gain the respect of players in several different countries.
"He isn't interested in talking just for the sake of talking. If he opens his mouth, it will be to make a pertinent comment or a telling observation. I met him and his family when I was at Penrith and we met up again before Scotland played Sri Lanka [at the World Cup] and I was a little bit surprised he didn't get the England job earlier instead of Peter [Moores].
"I think it could be a terrific appointment for England, not least because he has now been reunited with Paul Farbrace [who was assistant coach at Sri Lanka] and they work very well together. There's also the fact that Trevor won't blind his players with science or buzzwords. He is down-to-earth and I would expect him to capitalise on the young talent in the England squad, who have just recorded a great victory over New Zealand. He likes guys to express themselves and I can imagine him helping the likes of Ben Stokes [and Jos Buttler and Joe Root] become an even better player. But it will all be behind closed doors and he definitely won't push himself into the spotlight."
Bayliss will have to create the sort of harmony within the England dressing room that was so conspicuously absent during the internecine strife surrounding Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Strauss. But the scenes of Alastair Cook's confreres cheering the skipper to the rafters at Lord's testified to the unity which appears to have developed after the decision to consign KP to the past.
Certainly, Wright has no worries about the fact that Bayliss was not himself a Test player. "He had real quality, but it was just the situation for him - and plenty of others in the 1990s - that he was playing at a time when the Australians had one of the best teams in cricket history [fuelled by such warriors as the Waugh twins, Allan Border, Adam Gilchrist and Shane Warne], otherwise he might well have won international honours," said Wright.
"I look back now and I think about the rich relationship there has been between Scotland and Australia down the years. You had Mike Hussey at Ferguslie, Gilchrist and Justin Langer at Perthshire, Kim Hughes at Watsonians and there were many other cases. But it was just as important that these lads helped bring the best out of people such as myself and brought us across to Australia. I know that I couldn't have learned more than I did while I was with Penrith and Trevor was instrumental to that."
Wright didn't say whether he had sent his mate a good-luck message. But one sensed from his words that he doesn't reckon Bayliss needed it.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article