"Six of our main players were out. We missed Shaun and Mitchell Marsh and Pat Cummins due to injuries and Nathan Coulter-Nile and Michael Hussey to their IPL teams," says Langer. "It's not easy when you're without your main players. But that's the regulation."
So with the pressure all on opponents Mumbai Indians - who spent all of Tuesday praying that Rajasthan Royals would prevail over Otago Volts later on in the night, barring which they're out too - Langer, one of the leading lights of Australia's 'golden generation', is in the mood to talk about the bigger picture.
Asked about the dwindling turnout in some centres for the CLT20, he said, "It's a case of diminishing returns. We have to be careful we don't saturate it. One needs to do the balancing act of juggling formats."
He is equally candid about Australia's steep decline: "I don't want to talk about whether the IPL is good or bad but most of our young players don't go and play county cricket anymore. Learning from playing English county seems to be diminishing." He talks about "squeezing your best players all the time" when the talk veers to Michael Clarke's injury.
Another heavyweight, MI coach John Wright, too sounded bitter, but about rain washing out one match. "We missed one game, which is proving problematic. It's a long tournament for the number of games we have play. We've been together more than three weeks and played just three games."
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