'Australia can become the best T20 team' : Justin Langer

Australia arrived for the 20-20 World Cup having lost their last two T20I series to West Indies and Bangladesh.

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Justin Langer

Justin Langer ( Image Credit: Twitter)

Australia arrived for the 20-20 World Cup having lost their last two T20I series against West Indies and Bangladesh. Most of the players had not played a lot of cricket in the build-up to the event. To be fair, things were not very promising for them. More so, they were placed in a relatively tougher group with all five teams good enough to beat anyone. However, Australia displayed great spirit and won four of their five games to qualify for the semifinals.

While South Africa also had the same number of wins, Australia qualified on account of a superior net run rate.  Australia were in a must-win situation against West Indies and delivered a complete performance to demolish them. David Warner set up the chase of 158 with a brilliant 89 and was well supported by Mitchell Marsh’s 53. Australia Coach Justin Langer is pleased with the performance of his team.

"It's a silly cliche, but you've got to be in it to win it. We had to win yesterday, it was a tense day, we watched the South Africa-England game last night, but we did what we could do, and I was really proud of the way the boys have done that. They've played brilliant cricket, despite all the challenges, and we've got to keep doing that," said Langer.

A win alone might have not done the job for Australia and the team needed a big victory to boost their run rate. Langer, however, clarified that Australia were keen on playing good cricket and were not concerned about the run rate before the start of the match.

"We've talked specifically about not talking about run rates. We did after we bowled Bangladesh out cheaply, we talked about it then, but we just wanted to talk about our processes, talk about our systems, talk about just staying focused on what we can do right now," he added.

Langer further said that Australia is well capable to reclaim its lost legacy and become the best team in the world. "When these guys were together not that long ago they were the best T20 team in the world and some of our cricket shows we can be the best team in the world. I think England are leading the way at the moment, and we've got an exciting prospect, and we're taking great lessons and confidence from this tournament on how we can continue to play T20 cricket now and moving forward," he added.

World Cup Justin Langer