Mike Hussey joins Australia team as mentor for Sri Lanka and Pakistan T20 series
Australia coach Justin Langer has brought in former middle-order batsman Mike Hussey as the mentor of the team for Sri Lanka and Pakistan T20 series. Meanwhile, Ryan Harris will step up from his usual role as a High-Performance coach at the National Cricket Centre to be the side's bowling coach.
Australia are slated to play two back-to-back three-game T20 International series against Sri Lanka and then Pakistan, starting next Sunday (October 27), as a preparation for the next year's home men's T20 World Cup. Considering the fact that T20 World Cup is the only event that Australia are yet to win, their preparation has been taken quite seriously by coach Langer, and the Pakistan series will be the first step in that direction.
In the wake of it, Mike Hussey and Ryan Harris will join the team in different roles. While Hussey's appointment is in the same line that Ricky Ponting and Steve Waugh played in the world cup and Ashes respectively, Harris will step up from his usual role as a high-performance coach at the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane to be the side's bowling coach.
"I'm very excited actually. I'm really looking forward to getting back in around the Aussie team. They are going to be trying to get strategies in place, develop a style of play and what players they want and I love all that stuff — planning for a big event. They have floated the possibility of being involved closer to the T20 World Cup as well but it's all pretty loose at the moment," Hussey told News Corp.
The duo, earlier, had worked with Langer quite closely when they used to play for Australia and now that all three of them have been quite popular in their coaching tenure, Langer believes the duo can be influential in the group.
"I can't tell you how influential these guys can be on the group. It's about building our leadership, about honing their skills as cricketers, and they can just complement the other guys who are full-time coaches. It's nice to have different voices and different eyes and see guys of that calibre giving us feedback on what they see."