Trevor Bayliss warns England players they will be dropped and careers on the line if standards do not improve

Trevor Bayliss has warned his players they will be dropped if there are any more repeats of recent off-field misbehaviour as England crack down on discipline.

Telegraph Sport understands Bayliss, the England head coach, spoke to the senior players on Monday evening and the rest of the squad as a whole on Tuesday morning to make it clear any more misdemeanors will not be tolerated and careers are at stake.

Privately, England believe the players are sheepish over what happened in Perth last week when Ben Duckett threw a drink over James Anderson. There was a sense of injustice and a feeling of being stitched up over the Jonny Bairstow headbutt but this time the players know they are in the wrong and have accepted standards have to improve.

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Next month England name their squad for the New Zealand leg of the winter, the first chance for Joe Root, the new captain, to establish his authority by moving on any potential troublemakers.

Root spoke to the players before their night out on Thursday, warning them to avoid any potentially embarrassing behaviour and he is fuming they let him down, exposing him to another barrage of questions over the culture of his team as he tries to focus on a Test match at the Waca where Australia scent regaining the Ashes.

“It’s frustrating. We’ve spoken a lot about it. Trevor Bayliss has expressed his feelings and it’s about moving on now. We have a responsibility as players to make sure the talk is about the good cricket played by England,” said Root. “I knew it (captaining in Australia) would be challenging. And I knew there would be stuff around the cricket, but not to this extent if I’m brutally honest.”

Asked if he thought Anderson, at 35 and his vice-captain, should set a better example than being in a bar late at night with Duckett, Root agreed. “Yeah, maybe a little bit. A lot of people have spoken and given their views. His focus now has to be about leading that bowling attack and doing the right things on the field,” he said.

Curfews and rigid rules are not the way Bayliss or Root want to run their squad and those measures were imposed from above by an ECB worried about the image of the game as they start to build their new, family-friendly Twenty20 tournament.

But both captain and coach have accepted the team lives in a different world since the Ben Stokes arrest and higher standards are expected. Even Alastair Cook, one of British sport’s cleanest, most dedicated characters, realises times have changed for cricket. He also believes his 2013 Ashes win at home as captain was marred by a disconnect between the team and the public, summed up by the fact they could not understand the disgust some felt when they urinated on the pitch at the Oval.

“We can’t afford any more mistakes, because we understand the stakes, with the ECB and with sponsors, trying to make kids play cricket. You go back to 2013 when we won an Ashes series 3-0, but the public weren’t that happy. It was a strange one, as the captain of that, “ he said. “There was a big disconnect between the players and the public, and over the last three or four years we’ve made a massive effort to get that connection back. I think people have seen that. Clearly over the last couple of months, we’ve damaged that. We have to try and rebuild that a lot, because it’s so important to the players, and we’ve got to understand it quickly.

“Those last two incidents have proven that there is very little margin for error when you’ve had a beer. And to say that we’ve got a drinking culture in this team is very unfair. But we’ve just got to smarten up, and we’ve got to do it quickly, because there’s too much at stake. Not just one bloke’s career, but you always want to leave the side and the cap in a good place, after every tour and every game. People pay a lot of money to come and watch us here in Australia. At home, the support we get is fantastic. So we’ve got to build that trust back up.”