Amid uncertainty over Bangladesh's scheduled tour of Pakistan, it has emerged that the BCB has started taking consent from players to travel to the country. While this is a standard government-mandated procedure for every overseas tour, this is the first concrete sign of preparations for this particular one.

Equally significant is that a Test specialist confirmed to ESPNcricinfo that he had signed up to tour Pakistan; the BCB had earlier said that the national team is unlikely to take part in the Test series - and only play T20Is - and also denied reports that it had offered to play one Test in Pakistan and the other in Bangladesh.

It's understood that the BCB will likely take the final decision after their board meeting on January 12. If the tour does go ahead, the departure date will be January 18, the day after the BPL final. It's also learnt that BCB president Nazmul Hassan will meet some of the team's senior players on Tuesday evening for a final round of discussions on the matter.

There have been question marks around the tour since the BCB said it wanted to split the tour in two legs - it wants to play the T20Is first - but the PCB has been firm in its stance that the series must be played in one go, promising state-level security for the visitors like it did when Sri Lanka toured last month for a two-Test series.

Nizamuddin Chowdhury, the BCB's chief executive, said last week that the BCB wanted the squad to travel for the T20Is first and get a clear idea of the security arrangements. "We want our players, coaching staff and security team to see what it's like, after which we want to decide if we want to play Tests in Pakistan or at a neutral venue," he had said, while Hassan had said earlier that a few senior players had voiced their concerns over touring Pakistan even for the T20Is.

While Sri Lanka's tour to Pakistan was always going to be split in two legs, with an Australia tour thrown in between, the PCB swapped the formats to give Sri Lanka time to think about the Test series after a second-string side toured for the T20Is. The full Test side toured thereafter. But Pakistan's packed schedule may not allow them to split the Bangladesh tour.

The PSL is set to run from February 20 to March 22, after which the PCB will host its domestic one-day competition. Early in the summer, Pakistan will tour the Netherlands and Ireland, followed by an England tour. They then play the Asia Cup in September in preparation for the T20 World Cup.

The ECB has confirmed that Rory Burns will miss England's Test tour of Sri Lanka after suffering ruptured ligaments in his left ankle playing football the day before the Cape Town Test.

Burns underwent surgery in London on Monday and is expected to be out of action for four months. That means he will take no part in England's two-Test tour of Sri Lanka in March but hopes to return to action for Surrey in the opening weeks of the Championship season in April.

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Burns' opening partnership with Dom Sibley, who made his maiden hundred in Cape Town, was only three Tests old, with Zak Crawley coming in to take his place. Both Sibley and Crawley, along with fellow opener Keaton Jennings, have been named in the Lions squad to tour Australia next month.

As a result of the injury, the England management have banned the playing of football as part of the squad's warm-up routine.

There has been better news for England in the sight of Mark Wood and Jofra Archer bowling together in Cape Town. The pair were both deemed unavailable for the second Test but are expected to be fit to play in the third Test in Port Elizabeth.

Serena Williams started her fourth decade on the WTA Tour with a straight-set victory over Italian qualifier Camila Giorgi at the Auckland Classic.

The 38-year-old American, playing for the first time since losing in September's US Open final, won 6-3 6-2.

Former world number one Caroline Wozniacki started her final season with a 6-1 6-0 win over Paige Mary Hourigan.

At the Brisbane International, world number four Naomi Osaka beat Greece's Maria Sakkari in three sets.

That extended the 22-year-old Japanese's winning streak to a 12th match, having not lost since her US Open last-16 defeat by Belinda Bencic.

Great Britain gave themselves the chance of reaching the ATP Cup quarter-finals by sweeping aside Moldova in their final group tie in Sydney.

Knowing defeat would mean elimination, Cameron Norrie and Dan Evans won their singles against Alexander Cozbinov and Radu Albot to clinch victory.

Jamie Murray and Joe Salisbury sealed a 3-0 win with a 6-2 6-2 success over Albot and Cozbinov in the doubles.

Britain will qualify if Belgium beat Bulgaria 2-1 later on Tuesday.

If Bulgaria beat Belgium - by any score - they will progress as Group C winners with three victories from three ties, including a 2-1 triumph over Britain in Friday's opener.

That would leave Britain finishing second, although they could still progress as one of the two best runners-up - depending on other results.

The ATP Cup is a new 24-nation knockout tournament that has been set up by the men's professional tour to kick off the 2020 season.

It features six groups of four teams, who each play three round-robin ties in an event played in three Australian cities - Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.

The six group winners, plus the best two runners-up, will progress to the quarter-finals.

After losing to Bulgaria, Britain recovered to beat Belgium on Sunday and give themselves hope of progressing.

The Nashville Predators fired head coach Peter Laviolette and assistant coach Kevin McCarthy on Monday, with the team outside the playoff picture after 41 games.

No interim coach or new head coach was immediately named. The Predators face the Boston Bruins at home Tuesday night.

With Laviolette out, who's in? How much of this was his fault? Will the Preds make any trades before the deadline to bolster their playoff chances? And where does the veteran coach land next? Let's dive in to all the big questions.

Why now?

Did Peter Laviolette write this question? The Predators are by no means a disaster or in a free fall, sitting four points out of the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference with three games in hand. They're a middling 19-15-7, but on the plus side of goal differential.

The timing is a real surprise given the man doing the firing: David Poile, the only general manager in franchise history. He has had only five coaches in his 37 years as an NHL general manager. The Predators have had only two coaches in their history tracking back to 1998, in Barry Trotz and Laviolette. Trotz was fired after the season. Speculation was that if it were to happen to Laviolette, it would also be in the offseason. Heck, it was just on Jan. 2 that Poile said on the Midday 180 radio show in Nashville that "right now, [firing a coach] is not in my game plan. ... I'm not contemplating making any coaching change at this time."

But he also said something else in that interview, about the manner in which the Predators blew a 2-0 lead in the Winter Classic against Dallas: "The result of the game, and the game, looked like several other of our losses this year. Games where it looked like we had a chance to win ... only to lose the game. We really have some soul searching to do right now."

Perhaps Poile saw a pattern that wasn't changing for a team he built and decided enough was enough.

How much of this falls on Laviolette?

Obviously, whenever a team doesn't meet expectations and fails to find consistency, some of that has to fall on the coach. But how much?

The Predators have the second best goals scored percentage (56.28) at 5-on-5 in the NHL. On special teams, they're 24th on the power play (16.8) and 29th on the penalty kill (74.0). Just like great goaltending can lead to increased praise of a coach, mediocre goaltending can lead to one getting fired. The Predators are third from the bottom in team save percentage (.889) this season.

It's a reasonable assessment that had Laviolette gotten better special-teams play and a save once in a while, he's still coaching the Predators. Alas, he is not.

After so much dominance by Pekka Rinne in the Predators' crease, this season has been ... not so great. How does that factor in here?

The Predators have felt like they've been treading water all season, and the goaltending is a big reason. Rinne started strong (7-0-2, .920 save percentage) in October. The next month, he was 2-4 with an .857 save percentage. For the season, their 37-year-old goalie is a conundrum: a .923 even-strength save percentage, but an .896 save percentage overall thanks to that porous penalty kill. He has only 1.1 goals saved above average this season, and only .458 of his starts have reached the "quality start" threshold.

But it's backup Juuse Saros who has been the bust this season, with a 5-7-4 record and a .897 even-strength save percentage. He has a goals saved above average of 0.5, which ranks him 51st in the NHL.

Both goalies haven't given the Predators anywhere near the kind of goaltending they've taken for granted in the past; for example, each goalie was pulled in a loss against Pittsburgh in back-to-back games. "They're not the whole problem, but they're part of the problem. And they have to be better, too," said Poile.

So who's taking over as coach?

Apparently, Poile announces in-season firings like Gary Bettman announces Winter Classics: with an incomplete picture of the event. We know Laviolette is gone. We know Kevin McCarthy, the assistant coach that was hired with him in 2014, is gone. What we don't know, as of Monday night, is what comes next.

There are two assistant coaches left on the Predators' staff in Dan Lambert, a former Rochester Americans head coach hired last summer to "fix" the power play, and Dan Muse, who has spent three seasons as an assistant coach under Laviolette after serving as a head coach for two seasons in the USHL. Karl Taylor is the team's AHL coach, but beat writer Adam Vingan reports that he doesn't appear to be in consideration on an interim basis.

What about some of the coaches that recently lost their jobs? Former San Jose coach Peter DeBoer has said he hasn't been contacted about the Predators opening, and was due $3 million annually from the Sharks through 2021. John Hynes, formerly of the New Jersey Devils, has some years left on his deal as well, but has a connection with Nashville assistant GM Jeff Kealty, who played with Hynes at Boston University.

Then there's former Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babocck, but he can certainly pick his spot, with Toronto owing him north of $20 million total through 2023. (Babcock, it should be said, needs to do some image rehab before taking another gig, after accusations of mental abuse by former players.)

Do we expect Poile to make any deals ahead of the deadline?

Absolutely. Never one to shy away from a trade, Poile has already proclaimed that the Predators are "open for business" after having an organizational meeting with his hockey operations department in Dallas after the Winter Classic. According to Cap Friendly, Nashville has five picks in the first three rounds of this year's draft and could have upward of $8 million in deadline cap space.

What are their chances of making the playoffs?

Money Puck has the Predators with a 74.2% chance at making the playoffs, the 11th-best odds in the NHL. Again, the team has been good at 5-on-5; if they can figure out something with the penalty kill and get one of these goalies on a roll, a wild card or third place in the Central isn't out of the question.

Where does Laviolette go from here?

My bold prediction for 2020 was that Laviolette gets fired in Nashville and then gets hired as the first head coach of the Seattle expansion franchise. First, because he's a great coach that any team would want to have, especially a startup. Second, because NHL coaches are creatures of ego, and who wouldn't want to mold and shape a new team in their own image from scratch, especially after seeing how fun that was for Gerard Gallant in Vegas?

But mostly, because the general manager is Ron Francis, who played for Laviolette and who Laviolette coached for as an executive with the Carolina Hurricanes. That's a very strong connection.

What was the highlight of Laviolette's time in Nashville?

Leading the Predators to the 2017 Stanley Cup Final, despite losing in six games to the Pittsburgh Penguins. Their roll through the West, including a first-round sweep of the Blackhawks, was a defining moment for the organization, and it permanently etched Smashville onto the hockey map. And they did it all as the fourth place team in the Central that regular season.

How do we grade the deal?

I'll give it a B, pending the announcement of the replacement. As we've stated, Laviolette is an upper-echelon coach in the NHL. Even if his message wasn't resonating, the Predators were still a very good team, save for the penalty kill and the sudden mediocrity of his netminders.

Perhaps this is what kick starts the Nashville rise in the standings with a different voice. Or perhaps the next guy finds the same cow patties in the pasture, to use a Nashville colloquialism.

Arsenal midfielder Alexandre Lacazette said that Mikel Arteta's spirited half-time talk helped the team defeat Leeds United on Monday in FA Cup third-round action.

- Watch all FA Cup matches and replays on ESPN+ (U.S. only)

"The manager shouted a lot. He was not happy because we knew they'd play like this and we didn't respect what he had said," Lacazette told the BBC after the 1-0 win.

Leeds controlled the ball for almost two-thirds of the opening period and fired in 15 shots to Arsenal's three but failed to score as the home side's stand-in goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez -- and the crossbar -- kept the ball out. Arsenal earned a win thanks to a Reiss Nelson strike 10 minutes after the break.

The pressing ability of Championship leaders Leeds under influential Argentine coach Marcelo Bielsa, known for his brand of hard-running football dubbed "Bielsa-ball," had Arsenal on the back foot.

"The emotions are high," said Nelson after scoring his second goal of the season. "They played well in the first half. Leeds are a great team and they pressed us, we didn't expect it. We got the goal in the end and that is the most important thing.

"This will give us confidence to go forward."

Arteta described playing Bielsa's side as being like a nightmare trip to the dentist after his side battled back following a first half in which they were overrun.

"A nightmare for every team. To play against them is painful like going to the dentist -- it's tough. They are a great team and what they've built is powerful," Arteta said.

"If you're not ready for Leeds, you'll get exposed."

Arteta was so incensed at Arsenal's first-half performance that he gave the players a talking to at the break and his approach seemed to work as they improved in the second half.

"We had to react. The biggest change was how aggressive we are, making runs forward and being positive," Arteta told reporters after a match which

"The players are not used to a transition game, and they have to experience it," added the Spaniard, despite his Premier League team being packed with multi-million pound players from around Europe and Brazil.

For Bielsa, the loss was disappointing but did show that his side will be able to hold their own in the Premier League should they achieve promotion at the end of their season.

"The first half was very, very positive for us. In the second half the control of the match changed a lot," Bielsa said. "In the first half we pressed the opponents' defence more and were able to attack fast. We couldn't do that in the second half."

Arteta said Arsenal's 2-0 home win over Manchester United in the Premier League on New Year's Day had taken some of the heat off his struggling side but they could not afford to ease up.

"It was a big release for them when they won against United and they took a little bit of that pressure off. And then your body and your mind tries to relax a little bit," he said.

"We are not in a position to relax because we are not good enough to relax," added the Spaniard, who last month replaced sacked compatriot Unai Emery.

Information from Reuters was used in the report.

New Zealand are "hurting a lot" after being whitewashed in Australia, with coach Gary Stead admitting confidence among some key players will need to be resorted ahead of the next Test series against India in February.

Defeats by 296 runs, 247 runs and 279 runs - in a series where they only passed 200 twice - condemned New Zealand to their worst ever result in Australia having arrived as the No. 2 team in the world. While they were hampered by injuries to key players, and a flu bug that went through the camp during the Sydney Test, they were so far short of expectations as to raise questions over their planning and mindset.

This was the middle series of three key contests for New Zealand, having played England at home and then having India at the end of their season. Stead had said before this series that the team should be judged at the end of that run, which leaves the India matches as key for restoring some reputations, although it will be hard to shake off the magnitude of this defeat.

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"Everyone in the team is hurting and hurting a lot," Stead said. "We wanted to perform better than this but Australia didn't allow us to. There's no doubt the team has taken a confidence knock as everyone does when this happens. We have to go back and regroup, look in the mirror and say how can we keep getting better. India are an equally strong team and they will bring a big challenge for us. We need to learn from what's happened here but also trust the way we've played in New Zealand in the past will hopefully stand us in good stead when we play India."

There are unlikely to be significant changes for the Tests against India partly because there is not a vast pool to be selected from, but the emergence of Tom Blundell and Glenn Phillips on this tour has at least given some options. Blundell will likely retain his place opening in the short-term while Phillips will put pressure on the incumbents to produce runs.

"The way Australia applied pressure for long periods, and equally when they batted how they absorbed it is the key thing," Stead said. "They just did it better than us for long periods of time. The decision making around our batting needs to be stronger.

"It would be silly to have knee-jerk reactions about coming to Australia, which is one of the two toughest places in the world to tour. It's not like we have thousands of cricketers in a population base that allows us to make wholesale changes. There's no doubt we'll think about it, review what's happened and find the good and work out where we can keep making improvements."

Trent Boult (broken hand), Lockie Ferguson (calf) and Matt Henry (broken thumb) are on the injury list with Ferguson's time frame the most uncertain. Before the India Tests there is a five-match T20I series and three ODIs where Stead indicated the selectors may need to look at some other options.

"One of the key things will be assessing injuries. This tour hasn't been kind to us... it has the potential to leave some holes depending on their recovery time. That might mean more opportunity for a different crop of people to be looked at.

"We've got the T20 World Cup further down the track, I think it's 22-23 matches away now and we're still honing the way we want to play and who we see fitting into roles and learning as much as we can before we hit that tournament."

For a team that only recently had become uncomfortably well acquainted with defeat, Australia's 5-0 sweep of Pakistan and New Zealand was a breath of the sort of rarified air once occupied by the national team coach Justin Langer when he was an integral part of the (almost) all conquering XI led by Ricky Ponting.

Certainly it has been a season in which the likes of Marnus Labuschagne, Travis Head, Tim Paine and Mitchell Starc have made significant leaps forward as cricketers, while David Warner, Steven Smith, Nathan Lyon and Pat Cummins turned in displays to underline why they were already Test match players of top quality.

Nevertheless, the truest measure of the successes in 2019-20 will be how Tim Paine's side uses it as a jumping off point to greater challenges, starting with a Test series in Bangladesh in mid-year, and then the duo of series against India and South Africa that will ultimately determine whether they reach the inaugural World Test Championship final in England in 2021.

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History tells a tale that such summers, when outmatched opponents are swatted aside and Australia's cricketers are made to look like legends, can foreshadow complacency and hefty defeats as often as they become the foundation on which greatness is achieved. The unbeaten seasons of 2004-05 (preceding the loss of the Ashes in England), 2009-10 (followed by an Ashes hammering from Andrew Strauss' men at home) and 2015-16 (the forerunner to five Test defeats in a row) all turned out to be fools' paradises.

So perhaps the best way to look at Australia's results in these five Tests is less in terms of runs and wickets, but for what has been learned, and what more development is required to firm up not only the positions inside the first XI, but those on a fringe that will be more vital over the next 18 months.

At the top of the order, the selectors returned to Joe Burns after rather a lot of experimentation with others, and were rewarded with a strong sequence of partnerships with Warner, even if Burns himself did not exactly flourish himself. Opening stands of 222, 8, 40, 1, 62, 39 and 107 this summer, at an average of 68.42, meant that Labuschagne only had to walk out to face the brand new ball twice in five Tests, the sort of ratio any No. 3 would relish.

More problematic was evidence that Burns, against more precise seam and swing bowling, will be a chance of early dismissal due to a combination of indecisive early footwork and a tendency to drive at the full ball on impulse. He has between now and May to work on that issue, starting with the final bracket of this season's Sheffield Shield for Queensland.

Less clear is the question of who might line up to replace Burns should the need arise. After his Ashes misadventures, Marcus Harris has been serviceable for Victoria, but Matthew Renshaw and Cameron Bancroft have floundered for their states and the likes of Jake Weatherald and Daniel Hughes have not quite done enough to merit another look. When the time comes for Australia A to face England Lions in February, it will be intriguing to see whether the selectors look elsewhere - perhaps to a promotion for Will Pucovski, latterly Victoria's No. 3.

Labuschagne was, of course, the summer's most revelatory story, even if he never quite faced the sorts of challenges that he had already stood up to in England. A ravenous appetite for cricket in general, and batting in particular, was allied to a fundamental soundness of technique and strength of mentality to reap 896 runs in seven innings, and in doing so gain confidence and stature. Langer has spoken of how Labuschagne grew in respect among his team-mates when he substituted ably for Smith at Lord's last year; this summer has done the same for the Australian public.

In part due to the contributions of those above, Smith had a quieter homecoming summer than Warner following their Newlands bans, but still played a vital role in forming partnerships and soaking up balls. It was a role that did not necessarily enhance his dollar value for sponsors, but was of great importance to the team and a tremendous example of what a team-focused senior player can do as the glue between younger teammates. Langer had plenty of praise for him.

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"Don't underestimate the impact Steve Smith had on this series," he said in Sydney. "He didn't get the big hundreds and the big accolades but he chewed up a lot of balls when it really mattered in the first innings. He was outstanding without doing the superhuman stuff he did in during the Ashes but he had a great series."

In the middle order, Head and Matthew Wade found themselves occasionally feeling as underemployed as Nos. 5 and 6 batsmen often do in the Big Bash League. Head's journey from Perth, and a wasteful dismissal shortly after he passed 50, to Melbourne and a much sterner approach to his second Test century to capitalise on the earlier good work of Labuschagne and Smith has the potential to be a transformative one, even if he still has some technical work to do against balls angled into his stumps.

Wade, at 32, hinted at a major innings more than once, and his angry slap of the bat on the ground when out for 22 at the SCG confirmed he remains well aware that in terms of both age and performance he is currently the team's most expendable batsman. Should the selectors wish to move in a younger direction, perhaps towards Kurtis Patterson, Wade will be vulnerable, but the lure of a settled team and its importance to the Test Championship bid may well see him kept on board for much the same reasons as Paine now appears locked in as captain.

By leading the side with growing confidence and consistency - most tellingly in how they were able to string wins together for the first time under his leadership - Paine answered most of the questions that lingered at the end of the Ashes. He remains a batsman more concerned with partnerships than making huge scores, although there was noticeable growth in how he tackled the team's position in the first innings of the MCG Test, playing the counter-attacking innings of a wicketkeeper feeling secure in himself and his batting, rather than digging in for survival. Age and a fickle right index finger mean that Alex Carey will never be too far away from Langer's thoughts, but for Paine there is now a clear goal and end point: Lord's in 2021.

Issues of batting and captaincy were of far more importance to Australia this summer than those around the bowling attack which, based on their high levels of achievement in England and for several years beforehand, was always going to be too much for Pakistan and New Zealand provided enough runs were made. But it was still notable how Starc was able to balance the economy he had been forced to focus upon during the Ashes with the cutting edge he has long provided in Australia. In purely match-winning terms, this was as significant for Australia as Labuschagne.

Cummins, Lyon and the interchanging Josh Hazlewood and James Pattinson otherwise provided consistently suffocating pressure, both on the opposing batsmen and the umpires adjudicating on their fates. If this was too much for Kane Williamson, then there will be desperately few other batsmen around the world capable of standing up to them. Given the trials prior to the summer and those that still await, among the best elements of it all for Australia was that, save for Hazlewood's torn hamstring, the bowlers emerged without major injuries.

They were helped by what may, all in all, be the greatest gain of the summer: a settled team support staff around Langer. The arrival of Andrew McDonald as senior assistant, the utilisation of Troy Cooley as pace bowling coach and the quiet counsel of Ben Oliver behind the scenes gave Langer the kind of strong, trusted group he yearned for, and meant that if there were any problems for the team, they arose more from Australian cricket's federal structure than in the dressing room itself. That McDonald will lead the team to India for a white-ball tour while Langer rests says much for how the senior coach now feels comfortable enough to delegate after two grueling years in the chair.

How, then, will Australia's cricketers remember 2019-20? As a lot of fun, for sure, and a source of great confidence too. But it won't be until they discover how they can stand up to Bangladesh, India and South Africa in 2020-21 that the truth of this summer's Test matches will actually be known.

It was Marnus Labuschagne's summer, David Warner hit a triple century, Nathan Lyon had a career-best season and Pat Cummins remained the No. 1 bowler in the world, but when pressed to pick his highlight of Australia's 5-0 home Test campaign, coach Justin Langer singled out captain Tim Paine.

On the back of retaining the Ashes and now leading the side to a sweep of the summer against New Zealand and Pakistan, Paine has gone from an emergency captain in times of crisis to a likely longer-term leader with visions of taking the side through to 2021.

For Langer, it has been both Paine's leadership and his work behind the stumps that stood out even though his performances did not produce the headline-grabbing feats of many of his team-mates. But in Melbourne, Paine had one of his finest all-round games too, with a bustling 79 and eight dismissals with glovework that remained almost faultless all season.

ALSO READ: Marnus Labuschagne leads a summer for Australia to savour, but not for long

"Highlight of the summer would be Tim Paine's captaincy and wicketkeeping," Langer said. "People will be going 'what about Marnus?'. I could tell a story about the comeback of Mitchell Starc after playing only one [Ashes] Test match. I could talk about David Warner's 300 and how well he's batted after what's happened in the Ashes. I could talk about Nathan Lyon again, what a role he plays. I could talk about Pat Cummins being the best fast bowler in the world. I could talk about Travis Head's hundred. I could talk about Matthew Wade letting [Neil] Wagner hit him over and over again.

"I could talk about every one of our players but I think Painey's leadership, strategically and tactically, has been excellent. The way he took to the [focus of the] Test Championship, the way he kept wicket, a few of his innings, I thought Painey was brilliant this summer. And of course Marnus was great too."

Langer said that the five Test victories by such convincing margins had "probably" exceeded expectations and gave the season an eight out of ten when asked to rate it. "After the Ashes, we needed to get better. We needed to get tougher," he said, before explaining where the extra points could come from. "We dropped a few catches, a few run outs, a few of the boys got starts they would have liked hundreds. There's always room for improvement."

Even during the difficult times Australia have had over the last 18 months, the bowling attack was rarely an issue. The biggest success of the season has been stabilising the top order through Warner's run-glut against Pakistan and then the series-ending hundred at the SCG, his productive partnership with Joe Burns - even though Burns' returns were more modest - and Labuschagne's stunning output at No. 3. It meant that a more modest season for Steven Smith, who averaged under 40 and did not score a century, was barely noticed although some of Smith's contributions against New Zealand were vital.

"We talked about a couple of things when we came back from the Ashes. One was cementing our top three. I think we've done that. The second one was winning after winning. We had to get better after that. I think we did that right throughout the summer," Langer said. "What [Marnus] has done is mind-blowing, really. It's a great credit to his mental and physical endurance. It's a great credit to his humility that he's been able to stay so grounded through it all.

"Don't underestimate the impact Steve Smith had on this series. He didn't get the big hundreds and the big accolades but he chewed up a lot of balls when it really mattered in the first innings. He was outstanding without doing the superhuman stuff he did in during the Ashes but he had a great series."

Australia's next Test assignment is two matches against Bangladesh in June. Before then there is a return to limited-overs cricket with the one-day squad leaving for India on Thursday - a trip Langer will miss as he takes a break, handing over to Andrew McDonald - then a T20I and ODI tour of South Africa in late February. The men's home summer splutters back into life for three ODIs against New Zealand in mid-March before a trip across the Tasman for three T20Is.