Justin Langer’s lessons in life and cricket from coronavirus lockdown

Justin Langer holds forth on nanna’s cheese sandwiches, dad’s hole-in-one, new selection data and life during the pandemic.

Justin Langer with his father Colin after playing for Australia against Pakistan in 1999. Picture: Leigh Winburn

If you’ve got a bit of time for a story or two, JL has them lined up and ready to tell. The last time he spent this much time at home he was spotty, 16 and pawing at the carpet to get back to cricket training.

In April he was stood down and told to work just a few days a week while head office cage fought accountants. Not that JL ever stands down.

He’s back in full-time work now, but still stuck at home waiting for the signal to hit the road again.

In a socially distant wander through the winding paths of his mind, the Australian coach told The Weekend Australian stories of his grandmother Biddy’s cheese sandwiches, his dad’s first hole-in-one, Michaels Jordan and Holding and a few other topics which haven’t made the final cut.

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There’s never a quiet moment with Justin Langer. Paid for a few days a week he worked seven, restricted to the confines of his family home, he engaged with sports teams, corporates and community groups by Zoom, but mostly he plotted a return to cricket. When and where ever that will be.

We’ll get to the cheese sandwiches, that’s a good story and like all of the West Australian’s it comes with a life lesson, but first the sweetest moment.

Since JL’s mother died, his father, Colin, always in the chorus line supporting his kid’s cricket career, has filled some of the void playing golf. Lots and lots of golf. The pandemic has given father and son time to play together.

“He got his first hole-in-one and I was there with him and his best mates, Jack Heron who played cricket with Zimbabwe and Phil Mulcahy, both great guys,” Langer said. “What a great life experience to be there with your dad and his friends when that happens.”

Langer and his wife, Sue, have framed a photograph taken at the scene, which will be presented to Colin.

Australia coach Justin Langer holds court with the media. Picture: Getty Images

Langer’s been trying to sort out some perspective in the down time. Anybody who watched the Amazon documentary The Test would have seen and understood the difficulties of such in the heat of long, difficult overseas campaigns. The coach is a passionate man, his enthusiasm compelling, his intensity at times a little alarming.

Sport, he figures, has an important role to play in the pandemic.

“A lot of people in Australia hang out for the weekends to watch their sporting teams play, I guess with what’s happening now in Victoria it must be exciting for people to have something to look forward to, something to distract them,” he said.

“I was talking to the Western Force the other day and I just saw they’re playing tomorrow (Friday) afternoon and my first thought was ‘cool’ that’s my afternoon supported.

“From a different perspective it is also important for the (economic) health of the sports moving forward, everyone is talking about the economy and there is the debate about health over the economy, but the reality is the economy must keep moving forward otherwise there’s some real black holes down the track.”

Langer says the lockdown, with all the uncertainty about cricket’s road ahead, has reinforced a message his grandmother, Biddy Townsend, taught him over thick-cut cheese and pickle sandwiches she’d make on bread that was slathered with a centimetre of butter.

“I used go to her house for lunch when I’m at uni and I’d say ‘nanna, this is no good for me, I’ve got to get fit’ and she’d say ‘don’t worry, darling, this is good for the soul’. Those sandwiches were so good and they always came with a piece of cake and a cup of tea.

“I’d often tell her something I’d be worried about and she’d say ‘is there anything you can do about it darling?’ And if I said ‘no’ she’d say, well ‘nothing you can do so don’t worry about it’. If the answer was ‘yes’ she’d say ‘well, stop worrying and do what you have to do’.

“The point is that with so many moving parts, I’m learning and training myself that until there are decisions made and there is clarity I am not going to worry about it. If I have to make decisions that’s part of leadership, if other people do I will deal with it when they are made.”

Another positive has been the discovery that you can achieve as much at home on Zoom as you can face-to-face.

“I will never travel for a meeting again,” Langer says with characteristic optimism.

Biddy didn’t give any advice on picking teams, but the Australian cricket coach like almost everybody else in the country when lock down began, was watching The Last Dance and taking notes on the assemblage of a team around super star Michael Jordan by coach Phil Jackson. Don’t expect too many Dennis Rodman types in the change rooms, but know the selection of an extended squad for a potential tour of England was informed by the frequency of a player appearing in a winning side and the number of times they won player of the match awards. The method saw baby-faced batsman keeper Josh Philippe come into contention for the T20 sides.

Talk turned to the only cricket being played and the obvious topics; Michael Holding and Windies captain Jason Holder.

“What a player, what a player, when I was coach of the Scorchers the one player I wanted was Jason Holder, I said that every year, imagine him bowling at the WACA,” Langer said. “A great leader, a fantastic young man and he can hold a stick.”

Langer notes that he stayed up late at night to watch the conclusion of the first Test and presented the next day bleary eyed at the coffee machine. His friends had made similar complaints during last year’s Ashes.

“It gets to 2am and you have something on early but you just can’t go to bed,” he enthuses.

And Holding’s anti-racist sentiments at the match’s beginning?

“Michael Holding is a magnificent man, I love his commentary, but that was so powerful, so real,” he said.

“To see Mikey talk like that, it came from the heart, when you see those moments you really reflect on them. It’s like when you hear about the plight of Aboriginals and hear it spoken or through their music and dancing and you go ‘OK, this is real’. People who talk from their heart are the greatest storytellers.

“It showed he is more of a super hero, more of a real man because he was vulnerable, he was honest, he was able to talk about something that people are passionate about. It made him more of a super hero to me, not the opposite.”

There was also a great story about Biddy’s husband, the baggy green, John Howard and a Thermos of coffee, but that will have to wait for another time.