Langer asks his players to recharge during corona break

SYDNEY: Justin Langer has asked his players to find some "silver lining" amidst the debilitating mayhem that’s been caused around the world by the coronavirus.

In what he described as "more than a rainy day" scenario, the Australian men’s head coach also asked them to make the most of the "opportunity to recharge" and do "things you wouldn’t normally do". Speaking to the media via video conference from his father’s home in Perth (owing to a poor internet connection at his own place), Langer also looked at the one bright side of being in a lockdown with no live sport: "the nirvana in the fact we’re home with our families, we sleep in our own bed, we eat home cooked dinners and we can still work in one degree or another from home". Here’s more from the interaction, which ranged across various topics.

Like everyone, we’re scrambling at the moment. From a personal point of view, I’m trying to encourage our players to find some silver lining out of it. What I mean by that is we’re at the back end of our season. If we can use it as effectively as possible to give ourselves a physical and mental break it’s very important.

We identified in South Africa a number of our players were physically and mentally exhausted. We had all winter with the World Cup and the Ashes then into our summer, the boys were playing before that. Some of them came straight from the IPL to the World Cup, the point is it gives them a really good opportunity to recharge. We’re looking at scenarios to make sure we’ll be ready for whatever comes up. One of our values is elite professionalism. I’ll be very, very surprised if all our guys aren’t working very hard. They’ll have a mental break. Most of them, part of their lifestyle now as professional athletes, is they will keep themselves nice and fit. We don’t have the same formalised opportunities to do that.