Cricket 2021: All the latest on the state of Australian cricket; coaching job a poisoned chalice?
Justin Langer and Australian cricket are learning the changing landscape of the national game is making a strong argument for a major remodelling of the coaching role.
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Darren Lehmann finished in tears. Mickey Arthur was sacked with his track suit on.
Tim Nielsen left exhausted by the pressures of following a golden generation.
As Justin Langer wobbles towards the end of a four-year contract the pressure is rising on Australia to ask itself why one of the most cherished jobs in the country has become a poisoned chalice.
No matter what happens to Langer, Australia must accept it should split the coaching roles and get a second coach for T20 duties.
And it should also realise that four years should be maximum length any coach should stay in the job, for the coach’s sake as much as the team.
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The deep irony of the situation is that the golden standards set by a team Langer was part of as a player are now holding him to ransom as a coach.
The last Australian coach to retire with a smile on his dial was John Buchanan who, in the months before winning the 2007 World Cup, saw Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne and Langer walk into the sunset together after their last Test win at the SCG which sealed a whitewash of England.
No-one knew it the time but the world was about to change and Australia, not since nor probably forever, will have a side with the talent or collective focus to enable them to perform crazy deeds like winning two World Cups in a row undefeated or winning 16 Tests in a row.
Soon after the Aussie greats left the Test scene the Indian Premier League started and there were unproven Australian players who earnt more in two years in the IPL than Allan Border did playing for Australia for 17 years.
It subtly tilted Australian cricket’s focus off its axis. Players were no longer slaves to the Australian system.
Team work could no longer be taken for granted. Techniques became compromised. Priorities torn and twisted. The result is that Australia gets by on the back of goodish Test teams but the great ones have not been seen since. And may never be again … even though they remain the yardstick by which all others are measured.
Langer’s challenges as a coach come through intensity and the whispers about this part of his nature are true and an obvious worry because tightly wound cricket coaches rarely go the long journey.
But he is not the first hard-nosed coach to be whinged about.
When I first toured covering Australian teams in the 1980s you couldn’t go to the bar after play without having a player saying “the boys have just had enough of Simmo and all of his niggling and whinging about us.’’
But 30 years later, when I spoke to many of the same players for Fox Sports’ Cricket Legends show, a common line was “I must say, Simmo could niggle for Australia but he could coach and I needed him more than I thought I did.’’
Langer’s hard nosed approach is similar to Simpson, his first national coach, though Matthew Hayden sees one important difference.
“Simmo had far more autonomy than Justin,’’ Hayden said.
“Simmo could do what he liked. Justin is accountable to so many people up the line now.’’
For all the success Australian cricket teams have had since Simpson picked up the clipboard as the first of seven national coaches in 1986, the relationship between the teams and their coach has often felt awkward and often loveless.
Cricket coaches have never been the historically lauded figures like Jack Gibson in rugby league or Norm Smith in the AFL.
Some former players say they are a waste of time and overrated in a way you just wouldn’t say about a football coach.
Maybe it’s just the way cricket is. Don Bradman never had a national coach. Neither did Greg Chappell or Dennis Lillee. They don’t often get special mentions of thanks at Allan Border Medal nights.
There’s never been any official edict as to how much responsibility a captain and coach should have each and that he occasionally been a source of tension.
When Simpson started in the role captain Border let him run off the leash and regretted giving him too much power.
From coach to coach, captain to captain it tilts back and forth, rarely reaching a point where everyone is happy.
‘Langer’s gone’: Whispers cast cloud over Aussie cricket
Australian cricket is in a sombre, stressful state. Neither players or administrators seem happy with themselves or each other.
Rumours crackle in from mysterious sources like one last Friday afternoon which claimed “Langer’s gone.’’
Coach Justin Langer wasn’t gone — not now anyway — but the rumour was a sign of how jumpy and trigger happy people are getting and how the mood is becoming disturbingly tense as players knuckle down in quarantine.
When a coach is under pressure it creates a grim, heavy vibe that seems to permeate every tour, training session and most conversations. People struggle to see a clear way out.
Langer has almost a year to run on his Cricket Australia contract, but as the stresses of the job rise, with losses and lockdowns, quarantines and queries, every step becomes harder.
Langer is famously tough. The question is how much does he want to endure? Would winning bring a smile to everyone’s dial or have we moved past that point?
Former West Indian fast bowler Colin Croft once noted that when the Windies went 15 years without losing a series from 1980-95, it was amazing how many team blow ups went unreported “because when you win no-one cares … but when great teams lose, the smallest things matter.’’
Langer knows this vibe. This week’s story about him chiming in at the end of a verbal dispute between team manager Gavin Dovey and a CA video journalist was just the sort of issue which would have meant nothing on a winning Ashes tour.
The telling part of the story was not the exchange but that Langer knows that people in the team are happy to leak stories of even his slightest stumble.
Australian cricket does not do losing well and the loss of two recent home Test series to India and a string of T20 tournaments and one-day games has neutralised the success of Australia’s 2019 Ashes campaign in England.
When Australia lost the unlosable Test series to India last summer reports emerged that some players felt they were being overcooked by Langer’s intensity.
Some observers believed the ideal coach would have been a halfway house between the relaxed, de-stressing Darren Lehmann and the ultra-driven, high-standard setting Langer.
The best qualities of both men would have made the perfect meal if you could have baked them in a cricket casserole.
Langer is a good man and a difficult package to unravel because his greatest quality — his fierce intensity — also causes most of his problems.
The sense is his critics are too caustic of him and his mates like him so much they are almost blind to his faults.
The key to Langer surviving as a coach would be finding a way to be less intense for history tells us most successful cricket coaches have been men who became masters of the poker face and slow pulse like Trevor Bayliss, John Wright, John Buchanan and even Duncan Fletcher.
Cricket is not known for producing powder keg success stories with the clipboard. The game is too long to tolerate a five-day blow torch.
The temptation is to say that as Buchanan was one of his key mentors Langer needs to channel his inner Buck but in a way that would not be being true to himself for he is a man of passion.
When Langer brought in people like his old mate Steve Waugh during the last Ashes series it seemed to work splendidly as a pressure valve not simply for the players but Langer himself.
The ice man became an icebreaker … maybe it’s time for him to return.
Act on Langer before it becomes circus, says Gilchrist
Cricket Australia has been urged to act now on the situation with Justin Langer as the issue threatens to distract from an Ashes summer and T20 World Cup.
Cricket chiefs are monitoring the situation as the summer approaches.
Langer was dragged into a controversy last week when it was revealed he supported team manager Gavin Dovey in an attack on a cricket.com.au journalist over a video of Bangladesh players celebrating a series win.
Earlier Langer had been involved in a tussle with senior players who wanted the coach to change his emotional approach to the job.
Langer’s friend Adam Gilchrist has called on Cricket Australia to make a call on the situation.
“Justin is very aware of these perceived issues with his management style, and he’s going to keep trying to work with that, and I’m sure the players will try to work alongside that as well,” Gilchrist told SEN Radio on Monday.
“But the bigger issue, and it will derail the summer if it doesn’t get sorted out, is the fact these journalists have a direct line of contact with people within the inner sanctum there, and the people in that inner sanctum are happy to let it get out.
“So, Cricket Australia needs to try to address this very quickly. If everyone believes the best thing to do is move on from Justin Langer as a coach, do it sooner rather than later because it is just going to create a side issue, which is going to continue to be a circus.”
Gilchrist played down earlier comments on the media’s role in the Bangladesh incident.
“I don’t think I appropriately articulated what I was trying to say,” Gilchrist said. “I think I got drawn a little bit too much towards the journalists’ reporting of it, saying that there’s journalists making stuff up. I totally don’t believe that and that wasn’t my intention to insinuate journalists are making stuff up. And I tell you what, journalists are a pretty sensitive bunch, they let me know about it on Friday.
“They probably got a bit of a taste of what it’s like being the player in the spotlight. But yes, great apologies to anyone I’ve offended, which clearly I did. I’m just saying they are entitled to write whatever they like, and they do. I’d said the main issue in Bangladesh was more around the team manager and Justin wasn’t the one heavily involved in a big blow-up. Justin had a couple of words with the said media guy afterwards. But anyway, we don’t need to labour on that.
“The main concern is the fact there is leaks getting out. Because the journalists I did speak to on Friday, after they got in touch with me, were saying they’ve got direct lines into the team. So, that’s a concern and Justin is aware of that.”
Langer’s four-year coaching contract is due for renewal after the T20 World Cup and the Ashes.
He was brought in after the catastrophe in South Africa in 2019 and tasked with rebuilding the culture of Australian cricket.
A passionate man, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the task, but players have found his moods difficult to deal with when the results are not going their way.
Former captain and board member Mark Taylor said the dressing rooms needed to lock the door on the media.
“The disappointing thing has been that Australia lost last summer to India. That’s where all this talk came from,” Taylor said on Sunday.
“The Indian side without Virat Kohli was good enough to win here in Australia.
“When you lose in Australia, the magnifying glass goes on everyone, including the coach. That’s where it started.
“What Australia needs to do is obviously get their players back, stop the leaks within the team, that would be another thing. Stop chatting to media and get down and play some good cricket.”
Australia has not played a Test match since India left in January and has only played four Tests since the 2019 Ashes.
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