Like every cricket lover, Australia skipper Tim Paine is also excited over international cricket's return next month following COVID-19 hiatus with the England-West Indies Test series. Paine is very keen to see how the new interim health safety protocols adopted by the ICC, including the ban on usage of saliva, will be applied by the two teams when they step on the field in Southampton from July 8.
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"I am fascinated like anyone is to watch some Test cricket again and to see exactly how the West Indies and England series is going to work and the different things that they are going to be doing that haven’t been done before in cricket," Paine told reporters.
“I think it is going to be interesting and certainly for me and Justin (Langer, Aussie head coach) and the Australian international players it’s something we are going to watch very closely."
With Australia due to host Afghanistan and India in a five-Test summer later this year, the lessons learnt from watching the English and Caribbean players adjust to the bio-secure bubble will come to good use.
The Australian players have already returned to training, with Langer saying that he expects them to be ready to play by September, which has also raised optimism over the limited-overs visit to the UK that month.
"The next Test we’ll play is our summer, so we’re really lucky here that we’ll have a pre-season, all our nationally contracted players have gone back to their states, which is a great thing for both them and all our young domestic players in the country to be learning off Steve Smith, Marnus [Labuschagne], Pat Cummins and all these guys," said Paine.
"You get a mental freshen up, which your David Warners and Pats and Steves never get, but also these guys are getting to do a full pre-season, getting their bodies right, which they haven’t been able to do for a number of years."
"I think our Australian cricketers will be as well prepared as they’ve ever been come their first game, whether that’s Test cricket, one-day cricket or T20," he added.
(Inputs from cricket.com.au)
