The night Kerry Packer sledged Justin Langer and how the new coach can turn Australia around
Did you hear the one Kerry Packer unleashed on Justin Langer? If anyone knows about luck in life and cricket it’s the new Australia coach and he’ll need to add amateur psychologist to his resume for the first Test, writes Robert Craddock.
Opinion
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SPEAKING of sledging, did you hear the one Kerry Packer unleashed on Justin Langer?
At this week’s Bradman Foundation dinner in Sydney Matthew Hayden recounted the night when he and Langer went to Packer’s place for dinner and were discussing the significance of luck in life when Packer, in his own direct yet somehow playful way, decided it was time to fire things up.
“If anyone should know anything about luck, you should,’’ he said to Langer.
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“I’ve never seen anyone play and miss as much as you have, and what’s more – you should get down on your bended knees every night and thank God for me.
“During World Series Cricket we had to invent the crash helmet, and you’ve been hit on the head more than anyone I’ve ever known. If it wasn’t for the crash helmet you wouldn’t be alive, mate.’’
Langer indeed has his lucky moments but the essential story of his career was one of the hard graft of a man who clawed and scrapped his way through all sorts of challenges to finished with a distinguished 105 Test career.
All of this is relevant because one of the key reasons Langer was appointed to coach the national side was for his failures as much as his successes.
At the end of his reign Australia did not want a coach about whom it was said “because he had seen a lot of success as a player he struggled to relate to the failings of others.’’
Langer told Cricket Australia he had seen the game from all angles.
In the alpha male world of Australian cricket, Langer always cut a different figure as the quirky, unpretentious, hard worker.
LISTEN: The first Test side, Alyssa Healy from our all-conquering women’s team and a deep dive into the India squad on this week’s episode of Cricket Unfiltered.
He had been the boom youngster who made his Test debut at 22, the shattered fringe-dweller who for a while on the 2001 Ashes tour was so downcast at being dropped he momentarily put a wall between himself and the captain and coach.
He’d been the last man cut from selections for the 1993 Ashes tour, the batsman who bought a house at Perth’s City Beach and wondered, as he planned an expensive rebuild, whether he had extended himself too far given the uncertain state of his career.
For a while it weighed on his mind and form.
All these experiences will now help Langer as he prepares for the role of guiding one of the most fragile Test batting line-ups Australia has ever fielded in next week’s first Test against India.
Can you imagine how nervous and insecure all six of his batsmen will be in Adelaide on Thursday?
In testing times there is normally someone who youngsters can turn to for comfort as they turn their gaze around the dressing room – an Allan Border, a Steve Waugh or a Ricky Ponting – in the way that nervous flyers look for comfort to composed air stewards when the plane hits turbulence.
Next week there will be only Langer.
For the moment he can forget about technical talk.
Langer’s biggest challenge will be that of an amateur psychologist.
He somehow has to make players like Marcus Harris, the Marsh boys and Peter Handscomb feel comfortable.
He knows that horrible “there’s a shot-put in my stomach’’ feeling of being on trial every innings.
The Bradman Foundation Dinner came at a poignant time for Langer because, with Hayden and Ponting around him and the laughs flowing from all directions, the night took him back to the glory days when the dressing room was a warm and secure place.
That is what he must aspire to now.
It seems a long way away but one unexpected Test win can change everything.
THE GOOD: Former Lancaster bomber pilot Laurie Woods, who, at age 95, entertained fans with stories about cricket legend and air foreman Keith Miller at a book-signing in Brisbane last Saturday. You sir, are a national treasure.
THE BAD: The fact that Test umpires don’t get to stand in matches in their own country. Australia’s Bruce Oxenford did some excellent work with little recognition in recent Test series in the United Arab Emirates. The former leg-spinner is widely respected worldwide.
THE UGLY: The Great Rugby League Coaching Fiasco with the Broncos and Souths which made fools of everyone and demeaned two famous clubs and their coaches.
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Originally published as The night Kerry Packer sledged Justin Langer and how the new coach can turn Australia around
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