New Australia coach Justin Langer’s big challenge will be managing a team with or without David Warner
NEW Australia coach Justin Langer wants the old-fashioned Aussie mateship and he wants David Warner ... The big question is can he have both, asks ROBERT CRADDOCK.
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JUSTIN Langer wants old-fashioned Aussie mateship and he wants David Warner ... the big question is can he have both?
Langer’s two greatest challenges may be connected to the one player — adjusting to life without Warner, then life with him if Warner comes back after his year ban.
To say the relationship between Warner and his teammates has been fractured by the ball-tampering affair is like saying things have been a tad frosty between Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott.
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Some players have fallen out so badly with Warner they told Cricket Australia during the South African tour they never wanted to play with him again.
Ultimately it will not be their call and nor should it be.
But you cannot ignore the tension, the bone-deep wounds and fact that there could be a major blow-up if Warner and his former teammates are reunited. Or, worse still, one of those prolonged periods of awkward tension that chokes team spirit to death.
If Warner is the lone wolf it is being portrayed as then bringing him back will create a major challenge to Langer’s plan to make his team one big happy Baggy Green family.
But if he is left out, good luck trying to win next year’s World Cup and Ashes series in England.
Langer is made of stern stuff and has done a fine job uniting a fractured West Australian cricket community but this is a different, bigger, more intricate challenge.
In Perth, Langer was a local hero fighting for peace in his own backyard.
Deep down, despite all their differences, most of the Perth’s warring factions wanted the same thing.
For Australia, Langer will have some goodwill but not by the bucketload like he had it in Perth.
Langer brings a vast arrays of skills to the job and he will need every one of them.
Langer’s broad journey in cricket has allowed him to see the sport from all angles.
He’s been the tortured fringe batsman who once said to an out-of-form Glenn McGrath “I’m so happy to hear you finally having some self-doubts because I go through it every day.’’
But he has also been the flint hard senior professional who, in his pomp, was one of the most efficient run-scorers in the world.
He’s missed Ashes tours by a split hair (1993) and he’s got fortunate recalls, which saved his career (2001).
He’s been coached by the brilliant but brutally hard-nosed Bob Simpson and the far more sensitive John Buchanan who remains a close ally.
When Langer was down and out on the 2001 he spent four hours in a bar with Buchanan in Brighton before Buchanan rose from his chair and “like a father giving his teenage son a cuddle, the coach grabbed and hugged me with all the sympathy, love, care and understanding he could muster”.
Langer considered it a brilliant piece of coaching and the moral of it was never lost on him — sometimes coaches need to be made of stone but at others they need to be like family.
Langer has many challenges ahead of him but coming in while the side’s share price has figuratively gone through the floor is a good time to start.
Langer has spent his whole career being underestimated and it will be no surprise if he finds a way to make it work.
He normally does.
Originally published as New Australia coach Justin Langer’s big challenge will be managing a team with or without David Warner