Australian head coach Justin Langer has made his intentions clear to not field two separate Australian teams concurrently, an idea proposed owing to the COVID-19 pandemic that has affected the entire cricketing calendar for the year and 2021 too.
Australia and New Zealand are scheduled to play five T20Is from February 22 – the series will clash with a proposed Test tour to South Africa, according to the FTP and there are ideas of having two series at the same time but Langer wasn't impressed with the idea.
Speaking to SEN Radio, Langer said: “Not just from a coach's point of view but also from someone who's passionate about Australian cricket's point of view, my personal opinion, and the chairman knows this, the CEO knows this really clearly, is I didn't like it at all.”
The coach further explained, “I don't ever want to have two Australian teams in one place, that's my personal opinion. In this year with what's happening with COVID-19, I understand there are complexities to it. (But) we're one country, aren't we? We're not two countries and the one sport.”
The main cause of concern for the Australian coach is that fielding two teams at the same time would affect the latter half of the Sheffield Shield season since at least 30-plus best cricketers of the country won't be available for the domestic season at that time.
Langer further explained, “If you have two Australian cricket teams in this current COVID period ... let's say we've got to take 18 players to New Zealand, we've got to take 18 players to South Africa, that's 36 players out of the backend of the Sheffield Shield competition.”
He signed off by saying, “So, you're taking all your best players out of the back half of the Shield competition, which we've always said is the best domestic competition in the world. They're the sort of things that worry me with this. But this is a really strange season; we're seeing it with AFL, we're seeing it with NRL, but I certainly would never like to see it be a permanent fixture.”
