Langer pulls out old shot to counter England

Justin Langer has dusted off his pull shot in anticipation of an Ashes barrage of chest balls from Steve Harmison and Andrew Flintoff. While his one-day team-mates were running around England, Langer was in the indoor nets refining the stroke that was a feature of his early career.

Fast bowlers soon learned to avoid dropping short to Langer, who has the WACA as his home ground, but he expected England to follow similar tactics to their South Africa tour. Langer said the plan where Harmison and Flintoff attacked the batsmen with two men covering the legside boundary had "worked well".

"From what I've watched of England over the last 12-18 months they seem to rely on that a lot," Langer said in The Australian. "I also felt, more importantly than how they were going to bowl to me, that I've been a bit lazy on my pull shot and probably haven't scored as many runs as I should have in the past few years."

After making 115 in the Leicestershire warm-up, Langer said the lack of short balls in the past couple of years had helped improve his front-foot play. "If I can just marry them together then, if they do decide to start bowling short, I know I've still got the pull shot up my sleeve."

Langer also dismissed the run-scoring concerns of Michael Clarke, who has continued to struggle in England after a disappointing tour of New Zealand. "He's a young guy learning his trade and what can happen - we've all been through it - is you miss out a couple of times and you start to think about what's happening," he told the paper. "When you get these distractions you forget to watch the ball, which is all he needs to do." Clarke and Langer will get another opportunity to test the theories when the series starts on Thursday at Lord's.