Langer’s decency transcends his demise

The silence from the players since Justin Langer’s resignation has been telling Picture: Getty Images

Pardon first a personal reminiscence. On 12 November 2012, my good friend Ed Cowan made a maiden Test hundred at the Gabba. That night I celebrated with him and his family.

As we walked into the restaurant, we saw Justin Langer, then Australia’s batting coach, sitting at another table. He gave a warm and friendly wave. By the time we were finished, an evening I’ll always remember, Langer had departed, but we learned that he had quietly paid the bill.

As a journalist, correctly always the outsider, I can scarcely claim to “know” Langer in any meaningful sense.

But I know enough of him from other sources to understand that the action was characteristic. Whatever his coaching acumen and match day temperament, Langer is a master of the nicety, the decent gesture, the caring thought.

Sometimes these become public: when Tim Paine was languishing in Hobart in November, cast aside by Cricket Australia, it was Langer who detoured to offer his comradeship. If sometimes to a fault, Langer is a loyal man, with firmly-held values, intent at all events on doing the right thing.

There was always a chance his tenure as coach would end abruptly. Four years, three formats, Covid, instability at Jolimont, continuity among the players, a new captain, a supine board: these were the preconditions of a mandate for change.

It’s an exaggeration – and a borrowing from football – that Langer “lost the dressing room”. A few were discontented. A few others struggled more than they should have. But it’s mainly that the dressing room was four years older than when Langer was contracted, less dependent, more confident, ready to be differently challenged. You should never wait for failure to change; by that point it can be too late. It also stands to reason that players will have views on the subject – informed views, too, if unavoidably narrow.

Good as the last six months have been, too, the on-field results from Langer’s term deserve no better than a B.

Fifteen Test wins and seven defeats is enhanced by six wins under lights, Australia more or less owning the pink-ball patent.

Australia played too few Tests away in that time, seven (two wins, three defeats), to improve meaningfully their poor overseas record.

In 47 one-day internationals (25 wins, 22 defeats) and 53 T20 internationals (26 wins, 25 defeats), meanwhile, we were at best a mid-table performer.

But considering from where Australia started, stinking from the head, Langer deserves considerable credit. He inherited a badly demoralised team without its two best batters, under an emergency captain who quickly needed replacing in two of the three formats.

Especially early, Langer cloaked players by his own reputation. As a coach who had the confidence of the cricket community, he won patience for a team in flux.

When they won, they also won well, at least unobjectionably and at times even graciously. The one serious disciplinary infraction of the last four years, which cost Paine the captaincy, predated Langer.

Four years ago, some observers had convinced themselves that Australia could win only by behaving like a pack of pricks. The evidence of Langer’s tenure as coach is otherwise. For their enhanced standing, then, Australia’s players may owe Langer more than they are prepared to acknowledge.

The main knock on Langer is that struggled to find the right distance from which to operate – he was either too close, or too far away – and that after four years he should have found that medium.

There’s some foundation to this, and also to the impression he was unhealthily in thrall to his baggy green brotherhood. One suspects that he rather lacked disinterested counsel.

At CA, Langer reported to a friend, high-performance manager Ben Oliver, who reported to someone with limited cricket experience, chief executive Nick Hockley, who reports to a board barely able to govern itself. His closest confidante was probably team manager Gavin Dovey, who may not have been the counterweight he needed.

In that sense, the system has really failed everyone, Langer and players alike. It’s scary to think how Cricket Australia would face a real crisis, given its propensity for turning problems into outright fiascos.

Even Pat Cummins has lost some of his gilt. He looked at the very least compromised, and at worst disingenuous. Generally speaking, when you say you have “huge respect” for a guy and that you “love working” with him, implicit in that is that you want them to continue, yet on the actual question his prevarications were worseningly awkward.

It was common to say last week that the silence otherwise among players was telling. Maybe the silence since has been just as telling. Could not one player have said a word in praise of Langer as he headed off into two weeks’ isolation after seven months on the road? It looks churlish and ungrateful, certainly compared to the grace of Langer’s letter of resignation.

Ricky Ponting has called the whole affair “embarrassing”; it might even be worse. Humiliating is the word that comes to mind. How did a good man end up being treated so heedlessly? If this is how CA treats people in the public gaze, it makes you wonder how it treats people in private. I can vouch for Langer treating them better.