Peter Siddle may well be a Justin Langer favourite. There’s really nothing wrong with that

Geoff Lawson blasted Justin Langer for ‘playing favourites’ over selections. But successful leaders always pick on characteristics they value or styles that suit their plan. Langer’s own playing career proves that.

Justin Langer is paid to make tough calls, and will live and die by the consequences of his decisions.

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Accusations that Justin Langer “plays favourites” misses one crucial point.

Is it a good thing for the team?

It certainly was a good thing for Langer that he was one of Stephen Waugh’s favourite players back in 2001.

With Langer battling to lock down a spot in the Australian team, the confidence he was shown by his captain helped reactivate his whole Test journey.

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Waugh saw something in the plucky West Australian that Langer may not have seen in himself.

Justin Langer is paid to make tough calls, and will live and die by the consequences of his decisions.

He retired a decorated 100-Test player and there was no apology needed from Waugh for “playing favourites.”

Now Langer is the Australian coach and the shock call-up of Peter Siddle for the Boxing Day Test squad has been cited as an example of him “playing favourites”, with former bowling great Geoff Lawson arguing it exposed a conflict of interest with the coach being a selector.

If Siddle is a favourite of Langer’s, then was he also a favourite of previous coaches Darren Lehmann and Tim Nielsen? Taking 221 wickets and going on four tours of England makes him a pretty handy favourite to have.

Peter Siddle is unlikely to feature in the XI to face New Zealand at the MCG.

Besides which, Siddle, 35, probably won’t even play. If Jhye Richardson was fit he would have been picked instead.

But would that too have been interpreted as ex-Western Australia coach Langer playing favourites with his former pupils? Or just a quality up-and-coming bowler getting a go?

For all the ‘WA-club innuendo’ tossed about, particularly when Cameron Bancroft was picked as a non-playing standby batsman – to this day, not one West Australian has been handed his international debut by Langer. They’d all cut their teeth under Lehmann – or in Shaun Marsh’s case – Nielsen before him.

As Australia coach, Langer’s every decision falls under intense scrutiny.

Critics climbed into Langer 14 months ago for “character over cover drive selections” when the unheralded Marnus Labuschagne was plucked from nowhere to debut for Australia averaging less than 33 in first-class cricket.

Anyone still complaining about that “playing favourites” selection from Langer, please step forward now.

Langer saw a bit of himself in Labuschagne, and the kid is now the highest run-scorer in the world. What a story.

Cameron Bancroft was controversially selected for the first Test squad of the summer, but also axed soon after.

The point is, every coach or any leader in any sport on the planet has to have favourites to some degree: A player who possesses certain characteristics, or a player who can play a role in a game plan or suit a style.

Cricketers aren’t machines and – particularly with domestic batting averages so low – it’s a coach’s job to interpret what might lie beneath the numbers.

Since taking over the reins of an Australian team at rock bottom, Langer has spent almost every day of his life away from his family, and under heavy scrutiny to get the Australian team to win games of cricket.

Of course, he is paid great money to do it, but surely as someone who lives and dies by the sword he is entitled to push for players he feels can help him achieve that goal.

There is a danger a coach could become blind to his so-called favourites, but Langer has axed the likes of Bancroft and the Marsh brothers in crunch moments.

If Langer fails with a so-called team of ‘favourites’, he will come under pressure and could be sacked.

Then another coach can come in and do it their way.

That is the game of coaching.

But as it stands right now, the Test team under Langer’s influence is heading into Boxing Day having annihilated Pakistan and New Zealand in the three Test matches this summer.

Langer has made some blunders in his time – that too is coaching – but there is a license to make the odd error when you’ve just engineered the first Ashes retention on English soil in nearly two decades.

Yes, since that one where Waugh backed in his favourite left-hander from West Australia.