Justin Langer points finger at ‘not ideal’ IPL timing as reason behind injuries
Justin Langer has opined that IPL this year really probably wasn’t ideal timing for anyone and pointed that out as a possible reason for the growing number of injury lists in both camps.
India probably would have been affected the most due to the sheer number of injury cases that might result in India struggling to field a proper XI for the Brisbane Test. Australia are also ravaged by injuries, albeit in a lower number, and all it has come down to is the survival of the fittest.
Ahead of the fourth and final Test of the series, Justin Langer pointed out that possibly the “not ideal” timing has caused the number of injuries it has caused so far.
“… I’ve said this is going to be the survival of the fittest this summer. It’s really interesting how many injuries there’s been throughout this summer,” Langer said at a press interaction on Wednesday.
“We suffered through it through the white-ball series if you remember, and through the Test series. I can’t help but think that the IPL this year really probably wasn’t ideal timing for anyone, certainly for such a big series like this.”
Langer to review IPL’s impact on injuries
Australia lost David Warner and Marcus Stoinis during the ODIs after a long and rigorous IPL and Warner only returned in the Sydney Test. The Australian coach stated that he has great admiration for the IPL for the help it has done to their white-ball side but he and the high-performance team will review the causes.
“I love the IPL, I look at the IPL now how I used to look at county cricket for our young players, who go and play county cricket and it helps their cricket development enormously,” Langer said.
“I think it’s the same with the IPL with our players now, it helps their white-ball development. But the timing of it because of what happened with Covid, probably wasn’t ideal, and I just wonder whether that’s having an impact on the injuries we’re seeing for both teams throughout the summer. I’m sure we’ll review that.”
“We’ve got some high-performance people and the medicos and we said after the one-day series that we should review it. If you’re having more injuries or the trend is more injuries than usual, then of course you’ve got to review it.
“I’m sure we’ve got Andrew Weller at Cricket Australia, he’s on the case at the moment. A lot of these things you can say they’re one-off incidents, but when it becomes a trend, India and Australia have had more injuries.”