Langer Confirms Change In Australia's T20I Model Ahead Of West Indies Series

Cricket Image for Langer Confirms Change In Australia's T20I Model Ahead Of West Indies Series (Image Source: AFP)

Justin Langer has confirmed, on Thursday, that Australia will change its model about how to go about selecting the playing XI for a T20I match. 

The former Australian batter has been in a coaching job for a while now. He has always opted for five bowlers and six batters approach, which has worked in his case, having won Perth Scorchers, three BBL titles. 

However, while talking to media ahead of the West Indies series, which starts on 10th July, Langer said that Australia is looking for "different ways of winning games". 

"We're definitely going to do it (play more allrounders) tomorrow. The six batsmen and five specialist bowlers - it's certainly a model I've gone with throughout my whole head coaching career, there's no surprise to anyone with that. And it's been a very successful model."

"But if you look ahead … We might look at this 7-4 model, where you have a couple of all-rounders. Different teams do it differently around the world," Langer said. 

The head coach says that this approach is being taken looking at the upcoming T20 World Cup in UAE which will have slow & turning tracks since so many matches will be played at Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai in the coming months, which includes 31 IPL 2021 matches just before the marquee tournament in October. 

"Looking ahead also to the World Cup, if we look at where it's being played - the UAE - there's going to be enormous amount of traffic on those wickets, with the IPL, the PSL that has already been - we're going to play on some pretty worn wickets, especially towards the back end of the World Cup. We might have to find different ways of winning our games."