Finch silences talk about dressing room rifts between players and coach Langer

Australia captain Aaron Finch, who plays behind the scenes, downplayed talk of a disagreement in the dressing room between head coach Justin Langer and his teammates.

Langer has come under intense scrutiny in recent days after a depleted Australia completed a poor white-ball tour this month, suffering their first-ever series defeat to Bangladesh in the wake of a heavy loss to the West Indies.

While the defeats underlined a lack of depth ahead of the Twenty20 World Cup, reports of a heated exchange with a Cricket Australia journalist in Bangladesh shone the spotlight on Langer’s role in a tense team environment.

Langer is under contract until the middle of 2022, with a T20 World Cup, a home Ashes series, and a tour of Pakistan all scheduled to take place in the meantime.

“It’s a good question, and I don’t know the answer to that,” Finch said on Big Sports Breakfast when asked about how the internal issues are continually being leaked.

“All I’ll say is when you lose, everything is magnified and everything is highlighted.

“As I mentioned with the players on tour with bubble fatigue and guys not having any escape while you’re on tour, you’re locked into cricket mode almost 24/7 because you can’t get out and go for a coffee down the road or you can’t go out for dinner somewhere else.

“You’re literally just confined to the hotel 24/7. When you’re just around cricket the whole time, that can consume you so you get a little bit of burnout from that as well. And when you’re losing that just adds multiple layers to it as well.

“As everyone knows in sport, wins and losses are what counts and unfortunately we haven’t been up to the mark in the last eight-ten months.”