Bayliss tries for Sri Lanka job: report

CRICKET: Australian provincial coach Trevor Bayliss will fly to Sri Lanka next week to be interviewed for the vacant national coach's position, it was reported Wednesday.

The Sydney Morning Herald said New South Wales state coach Bayliss was a candidate for the position vacated by fellow countryman Tom Moody, who quit Sri Lanka last month to take over at Western Australia.

The newspaper reported that Bayliss would be interviewed in Colombo on June 14.

"It's a job with an international team, and one of the better international teams, so you'd be nuts not to hear them out," Bayliss said. "And if something was offered, you'd be silly to knock it back. "I spoke to Tom (Moody) about a week ago just to find out what I can expect in the interview. So now it's just a case of going over and seeing what they have to say."

Bayliss' current employer, Cricket NSW, told the newspaper it will not stop him taking up the coaching position in Sri Lanka if he is successful.

NSW chief executive Dave Gilbert added that Sri Lanka's pursuit of Bayliss had prompted Blues officials to formulate contingency plans in the event their head coach departs.

"We won't be standing in the way of Trevor," Gilbert said. "If he wants to prove himself on the international stage, we will stand aside. We don't want to lose him, but we realise he is very ambitious, and in the long term he wants to coach Australia.

"Coaching another international side would be a big step towards that goal. Just look at the way it catapulted Tom Moody to the upper echelons of world cricket."

SYDNEY, Wednesday AFP