Australia yet to decide on XI for Sydney: Langer

It's not only the foreboding miasma that has seemingly settled permanently upon Sydney that has markedly changed the view that confronted Justin Langer ahead of the marquee New Year Test match 12 months ago.

With Australia ablaze, the national men's team coach is preoccupied with thoughts of the countless communities besieged by bushfires and of the heroes battling around the clock to save them from the forces nature has unleashed.

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But he also remembers the vastly different mindset he brought into the annual SCG Test match a summer ago, when both the weather conditions and the short-term outlook for his team were vastly different.

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At that stage, Langer had been in the job for eight months and – with his two best all-format batters (Steve Smith and David Warner) still sidelined through suspension – had overseen just seven wins from 27 matches across Test, ODI and T20I matches.

And three of those victories came in 20-over internationals against non-Test playing nations Zimbabwe and the United Arab Emirates.

Langer later revealed that during last year's SCG Test against India, who needed only to draw the match to secure their first Test series win in Australia, his wife told him through tears at the breakfast table how uncomfortable she felt with the way the job was affecting him.

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A week or more later, Langer was involved in a testy exchange with a journalist prior to an ODI at the SCG and was shocked to see the subsequent reportage that suggested he was battling to retain his cool even though he claimed he was only "two out of 10 grumpy" in that incident.

But during the intervening year, the team's balance sheet showed 32 wins versus nine losses across the three formats which included Test series clean sheets against Sri Lanka, Pakistan and New Zealand, as well as retention of the Ashes in the UK and a semi-final berth in the ICC World Cup.

A year ago, Langer just longed to hear the team victory anthem - of which he was song master during his playing days in a golden era of Australia men's cricket – ring out rather than be regularly confronted by the drawn faces that accompany defeat.

Now, his charges are lifting their focus towards the historic first final of the ICC's newly introduced World Test Championship in mid-2021 as well as other performance goals that seemed unimaginable at the start of 2019.

"We have to keep winning," Langer said when asked how close the current group is to adopting the aura that accompanied the all-conquering teams of which he was part.

"The only way you get it is to keep winning.

"What’s most interesting is we haven’t really talked about it, we’ve had targets, for example the World Cup, we targeted that a bit out, and we had the Ashes last year.

"I put it to the team at the start of this summer, what’s our next target, put it to the leadership group and they started talking about the World Test Championship.

"So all of a sudden there’s a focus there.

"The year’s been incredible with a World Cup and an Ashes (campaign), the way the boys individually are getting better, the way the group’s getting better, and the feeling in the camp’s unbelievable but the trick is to maintain it.

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"The All Blacks (New Zealand's rugby team) do it over and over again.

"The Australian cricket team in the past has been able to, and hopefully I can be sitting here in twelve months' time with a smile on my face.

"That’s what the plan for the new year is, not to start again but to continue building this great momentum that’s happening in Australian cricket at the moment.

"It didn’t feel like it 12 months ago."

Of the significant changes to have manifested in the year since India skipper Virat Kohli triumphantly brandished the Border-Gavaskar Trophy after securing his team's historic Test series win, none has been more profound than Australia's top-order batting productivity.

And no one player better characterises that transformation than Test number three Marnus Labuschagne who was not in Australia's starting XI when 2019 dawned but finished as the elite format's leading runs scorer for the calendar year.

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Langer also sees the chemistry that has developed within the group, and particularly bonds such as those forged between Labuschagne and his 'bromance' partner Steve Smith as well as the rekindling of the opening partnership of Warner and Burns, as crucial to the results achieved.

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However, there is one throwback to 12 months ago that he desperately hopes to revisit during the third and final Domain Series Test, and it has nothing to do with cricket performance or personnel.

The 2019 New Year Test ended in a draw, with not a single ball delivered on the final day due to persistent rain across Sydney.

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While that contingency might have ameliorated Langer's mood at the time, given Australia had been forced to follow-on and were staring hard at defeat, the men's team coach admits he has never before wished for weather to intervene during a Test match.

But he's prepared to make an exception if an unexpected break in the drought that has ravaged so much of Australia this year was to occur during the course of the final Test against New Zealand.

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"It will be the first time I’ll ever say this in my life, but I hope it rains a bit during the Test because Sydney needs it," Langer said today.

"I hope it rains at night so we can keeping playing but Sydney, like lots of Australia, needs the rain.

"We are so privileged with what we do, we get to play cricket (when) a lot of people are suffering.

"I don’t want to get sentimental, but we’ve talked about making Australians proud of us for the last 12-18 months, earning back respect, and we are feeling for the Australians out there who are suffering.

"It’s a really tough time, all we can do is out a smile on their face by playing some good cricket."

Domain Test Series v New Zealand

Australia squad: David Warner, Joe Burns, Marnus Labuschagne, Steve Smith, Matthew Wade, Travis Head, Tim Paine (c, wk), Pat Cummins, Mitch Starc, Nathan Lyon, James Pattinson, Michael Neser, Mitchell Swepson

New Zealand: Todd Astle, Tom Blundell, Trent Boult, Colin de Grandhomme, Matt Henry, Kyle Jamieson, Tom Latham, Henry Nicholls, Jeet Raval, Mitchell Santner, Tim Southee, Ross Taylor, BJ Watling, Neil Wagner, Kane Williamson (c)

First Test: Australia won by 296 runs in Perth

Second Test: Australia won by 247 runs

Third Test: January 3-7, SCG (Seven, Fox & Kayo)