Australia coach Justin Langer fights for dressing room handshake amid coronavirus fears
Fists bumps, elbow rubs ... they’re not for Aussie coach Justin Langer, who is battling hard to keep the handshake relevant in a time of crisis.
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Justin Langer is keen to maintain the tradition of handshakes in the Aussie dressing room, despite the looming threat of the coronavirus.
England and South Africa’s touring teams have both declared they will enforce a strict policy of fist-bumps only for their upcoming trips to Asia in a bid to reduce the risk of infection.
But Langer says this week’s series against New Zealand beginning on Friday in Sydney will not prompt drastic changes to how the team interacts on the field.
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“No, we’ll keep shaking hands and at the end of them, what do you call that stuff? Hand sanitiser. I reckon there’s plenty of hand sanitiser in the Australian kits. I’m sure we’ll just keep shaking hands and move on from that,” Langer said.
Australia were served up a lesson in the 3-0 series loss to South Africa, but perspective was being kept over what the defeat meant.
The next World Cup is still more than three years away and Australia rested fast bowling spearhead Pat Cummins as well as granting leave to Mitchell Starc for the final ODI against South Africa in Potchefstroom.
Langer was disappointed at suffering a series clean sweep, but was maintaining perspective over where the losses sit in the greater scheme of things as Australia prepares for a T20 World Cup on home soil.
“That’s a long way away. The truth is we’ve got a bit of an eye to the T20 World Cup,” Langer said.
“We’ve got another nearly four years until the next one-day World Cup. That said, we haven’t played good enough cricket. It’s very disappointing. South Africa, it reminded me a bit of the old great German soccer teams, they’re so disciplined, they’re so fit, and their processes are just so disciplined all the time.
“So, they got the better of us in one-day cricket so far, or for some time now and we respect how they play their one day cricket. They were too good for us these last three.
“What I’ve learned and everyone in the world is looking for it. Some of the teams, we’ve been fortunate in the past (to work with) with a Mike Hussey or a Michael Bevan who are masters at it (middle-order batting).
“It’s a role that’s there for someone to grab hold of,” Langer said.
“No one at this stage has absolutely secured it have they? But there’s good opportunities there for someone to do that.”
The coach admits some Australian players are running on empty after a long campaign dating back to last year’s World Cup in the UK.
“We’ll take some good lessons from this. The truth is we’ve got some weary boys at the moment, particularly our senior players,” Langer said.
“They play so much cricket and you think about what they’ve done since we started the last World Cup.
“They went straight from the IPL which was almost a year ago, straight to the World Cup, and straight to the Ashes.
“It’s been a golden summer for us until probably these last three one-dayers. We’ve got some weary boys, we know we’ve still got six more games to play (against New Zealand) and then they’ve got to go again.
“We’ve got to work out, I think England are showing their cards a bit how they’re playing their one-day cricket.
“With the bigger picture view. We’ll have those discussions in the next few weeks got to give them a chance to have a crack at it.”
Originally published as Australia coach Justin Langer fights for dressing room handshake amid coronavirus fears