When Trevor Bayliss takes his first look at English county cricket in early May, he has announced – in his quiet yet firm Aussie manner – three things he will be looking for.
The first is “smartness”. Nothing sartorial here, but smartness in the sense of cleverness, and not in any academic sense. He is searching for cricketers with astute cricket brains.
The second requirement that Bayliss wants to see in aspiring England players, whatever the format, is toughness. The ability to perform when the pressure is most intense. The ability that was woefully lacking in England’s batting and fielding as they crumbled from 2-0 up against South Africa to 3-2 down.
Bayliss wants his side to toughen up
One such disintegration in a young team was forgivable, but not both. For the fielding to buckle in the fourth ODI (notably the drops by Jason Roy, Alex Hales and Adil Rashid in ascending order of culpability), to be followed by the headless-chicken batting in the fifth, added up to a pretty strong indication that this XI do not have the fibre to win the Champions Trophy of 2017, or the World Cup of 2019, without a change in personnel.
An answer, however, may have landed already right in front of the England coach’s nose.
James Vince has flown in from the United Arab Emirates, where he has spent much of the winter leading the England Lions, to join England’s squad for the two T20 internationals against South Africa on Friday and Sunday, and for the World T20 finals in India next month.
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Vince could hardly have done more in his three T20 internationals to date, against Pakistan in the UAE before Christmas, to demonstrate smartness and toughness. Now Hampshire’s captain in all three formats at the age of 24, he is set to prove that the maturity – which had been wanting when it came to listening to advice – has arrived.
“I want to play all formats for England, ideally,” said Vince, ahead of England’s T20 warm-up against South Africa A in Paarl. “My way in has been through Twenty20, but I’d like to progress to the one-day and Test sides.”
Vince’s batting in those three T20s against Pakistan was orthodox but powerful, founded on his fluent driving. None of the audacity and funkiness of Sam Billings, who has arrived in South Africa along with Vince, which is needed towards the end of an innings; but the batting, which launches one quickly, yet soundly. On his T20 debut, as England’s No 3, Vince faced a situation of 19 for three. He reacted not by panicking but by scoring 41 off 36 balls and staging a rallying stand with Eoin Morgan. In the second game he top-scored with 38 off only 24 balls, a match-winning rate.
Vince, left, alongside Eoin Morgan and Jason Roy
In the third game, Vince was promoted to open and, after 12.3 overs, England were 86 for six. How tempting to slog one up in the air – as Vince’s elders and betters did in Cape Town last Sunday. But he kept working the ball around, found a partner in Chris Woakes, scored 46 off 45 balls, nursed England up to 154 – and saw his team tie the game then win the super-over eliminator. Having steered England to victory in every match, Vince was player of the series.
After all his England duties in the UAE either side of Christmas, Vince stayed there to represent Karachi Kings in the new Pakistan Super League with modest success. He scored 111 runs in his seven innings for Karachi Kings, for whom Ravi Bopara was the star performer.
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“It was a pretty good competition,” Vince said, “and I played quite a bit of cricket in a short space of time, so it was good preparation for what’s to come in India. It was good to play as an overseas player and experience different people in the dressing room, that sort of thing.”
More of a disappointment than his role in the PSL is that Vince has not bowled so far this year. In Bayliss’s ideal white-ball world, a batsman has either to be “a gun fielder” or bowl a bit, and Vince has bowled enough medium pace to take 19 first-class wickets. Not a Paul Collingwood quite, but worth three or four overs at a pinch, which none of Roy, Hales, Morgan and Billings can supply.
But like all England players under the new regime, Vince has to pull his weight in fielding – which is the third area that Bayliss wants to research as he goes round the counties in early season: to find out what it is about the training that results in English fielding lagging behind the southern hemisphere’s.
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