I Love The Experience He Has - Shane Watson Backs Trevor Bayliss To Become Australia’s Head Coach

Former Australia captain Shane Watson has backed England’s Trevor Bayliss to take up the job of national team’s head coach after the unceremonious exit of Justin Langer last month. After the departure of Justin Langer as the head coach, Andrew McDonald is currently the interim coach of the men’s side.

Langer, who had taken over the Australia coach job in the aftermath of the 2018 Cape Town ball-tampering scandal, was supposed to remain coach until June 2022 and was expecting another stint at the job.

However, Cricket Australia, in their review of his job, only offered him a six-month extension until the T20 World Cup 2022 at home. The former Australia opener found this as an insult and instead resigned from the job with immediate effect.

I Would Love To See Him Get A Great Opportunity: Shane Watson On Trevor Bayliss Coaching Australia

Bayliss was England’s coach when he helped captain Eoin Morgan turn around their white-ball game after the 2015 World Cup disaster, as England went from struggling in ODIs, to world champions in the 2019 World Cup. He was also the head coach of Sri Lanka from 2007-11.

Though Watson expects McDonald to be in the new coaching setup, however, international coaching experience of Bayliss is hard to ignore.

“I love the experience Trevor Bayliss has. He has probably seen every single thing possible in cricket just about and I would love to see him get a great opportunity. Andrew McDonald is a great coach and is in the early part of his career, but I would err towards experience just for this interim period for the next stage of Australian cricket,” said Watson on the latest episode of The ICC Review show.

Watson also lauded Justin Langer for the job he did as Australia head coach, during which they retained the Ashes in 2019 and 2021-22 and also won the T20 World Cup 2022 in UAE, their maiden T20 title.

“He (Langer) did a tremendous job to know the success he had as a coach to be able to be a part of a team and the resurrection of them winning the T20 World Cup for the first time.

“There have been a lot of tries beforehand and the team wasn’t able to get across the line and to be able to win the most recent Ashes series 4-0 here at home is an incredible achievement as a coach.

“He did a brilliant job at a time when Australian cricket really needed someone to come in and pull back everyone around the team at that time too and instill the fabric of the baggy green is exactly what Justin Langer did incredibly well,” Watson said.

Watson, 40, felt that the Australia head coach position could be broken up into red-ball and white-ball stints in the future.

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