Justin Langer says his hunger to retrieve cricket's Ashes from England later this year is akin to a raging inferno. The doughty left-handed opening batsman, who celebrates his 36th birthday two days before the November 23 first Ashes Test in Brisbane, was constantly reminded of Australia's 2005 Ashes demise during his short English county stint with Somerset last July.
England rocked the heavily-fancied Aussies with a momentous 2-1 series victory to regain the Ashes after almost two decades of being second-best.
Langer, who wears his heart on his sleeve and lives for his cricket, says the needling he received from English fans has revved him up for one of cricket's most anticipated series.
"The kindling was on the fire then (losing the Ashes), but now its like an inferno," Langer said at the recent Australian team camp in Queensland. Langer showed he is in great scoring touch for the coming five Test matches when he broke legendary West Indies batsman Viv Richards's Somerset county record with 342 against Surrey in mid-July.
But now his sights are set on helping Australia regain the urn in what he regards as a massive series. "In India (2001) we thought then that it could not get any bigger than this," Langer said. "I thought it was the summit of my career, then we played the Ashes last summer and it was another summit. The summits keep presenting themselves and this is another one."
Langer, who ranks as Australia's seventh all-time highest run-getter with 7,393 runs in 100 Tests at 45.35, said relinquishing the Ashes was an "awesome learning experience" for Ricky Ponting's team.
"What happened last time was disappointing but it was an awesome learning experience for the team and a lot of the things that we learnt have just come together over five days of the (Australian) team boot camp," he said.
"The sign of a great team is how you come back and weve won every Test bar two draws since we got beaten (in England), so weve obviously learnt our lesson.
"If you do that you get better and that's where the challenges come up.