Langer hopes England tour will build players' character

Australia ended the disastrous tour of England with a 28-run loss in the one-off T20I at Edgbaston, on Wednesday (June 27). Earlier, the tourists had also slipped to a 5-0 whitewash in the 50-over format. However, Justin Langer, the head coach, reckoned that "there's light at the end of the tunnel" for the beleaguered side.

Australia's inexperienced attack, without the services of Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc, wasn't able to stem the run-flow as England's batsmen ran riot in most of the limited-overs games. In the one-off T20I too, England amassed a daunting 221 for 5 in their allotted 20 overs.

"I knew it was going to be a big job, knowing where we came from in South Africa," Langer reflected at Edgbaston. "There's been some great learning and some really positive stuff that has come from this trip. On the surface, it looks like a complete disaster but we have talked about building a team that's going to be ready for the World Cup and the Ashes and I think we have unlocked a few answers. But it hurts when you get beaten, particularly in England," he added.

The batsmen too couldn't put up consistent performances. Shaun Marsh composed a couple of hundreds, while Aaron Finch crunched one century in the ODI series. Finch also gave a glimpse of his power-hitting with a 41-ball 84 in the only T20I. However, rest of the batsmen mostly struggled to make an impression.

Langer, on his part, travelled back in time to share an interesting anecdote from his teammate David Boon while playing the Windies pace trio of Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh and Ian Bishop on his Test debut in Adelaide in 1991-92: 'Test cricket will never get any tougher.'

Langer would be hoping that the inexperienced pacers - Kane Richardson, Jhye Richardson, Billy Stanlake and Michael Neser - would take the chastening experience of being smashed around in England as a motivation and get mentally tougher.

"Hopefully it will add some layers to their character and not scars," Langer said. "We'll find out (about their character) and for a lot of them, the facts and the reality are that they are very inexperienced. In a perfect world you bring a couple of your best young players into an experienced team, we just haven't got the luxury of doing that at the moment. A few of the boys have walked into the jungle and we'll see how they go, not only over the next six months, but over the next two or three or 10 years," he added.