Langer voices his concern against scheduling clash

Bengaluru, October 15: Australian coach Justin Langer has expressed his reservations over the prospect of playing a Test series and Twenty20 series concurrently in early 2021.

The Kangaroos are scheduled to play five T20s in New Zealand from February 22 to March 7, which would clash with the proposed Test tour of South Africa.

The former Australian opener said he had raised his concerns with the game's governing body in the country -- Cricket Australia.

"The chairman knows this, the CEO knows this really clearly -- my personal opinion is I don't like it at all," Langer was quoted as saying by the local radio station SEN.

"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 the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, I understand there's complexities to it.

"We're one country, aren't we? We're not two countries. And we're one sport."

While the schedule clash could deplete the quality of both Test and T20 squads, Langer said he was also concerned about the domestic Sheffield Shield.

"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 said.

"And that's before any injuries that will inevitably happen every year. They're the sort of things that worry me with this."

As for all international sport, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused huge schedule disruptions and forced almost all the cricket boards to make compromises to organise competitions.

Even the International Cricket Council-sanctioned Twenty20 World Cup scheduled to be held in Australia in October 2020 was put off, thereby opening a window for the Board of Control for Cricket in India-approved Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 tournament, which is now currently underway in three venues in the UAE.

The franchise-based IPL is usually held in the April-May window, but had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

(With inputs from Agencies)