Back in December, before the Boxing Day Test where the fate of the Ashes was sealed, Justin Langer did a favour for an old friend, agreeing to be interviewed on Alan Jones’ online show, the last vestige of Jones’ former radio and TV footprint.
As is the way with these things, Jones reciprocated the favour with a glowing summary of Langer’s career stats, brickbats for anyone who questioned him and a warning that “if you’re a cricketer at any level, and you can’t learn something from this bloke, I’m not sure you deserve to be in his company”.
During Langer’s playing days, Jones referred to the left-hander as “JL 300” by way of encouraging him to make a triple century. When he finally did, for Somerset in 2006, Langer gave Jones the bat with which he scored it.
On the 2001 Ashes tour, when Langer was languishing outside the national team, Jones called to offer support. As Langer put it in the interview, “Steve Waugh always had great faith in me, like you always had”.
Towards the end of their 15-minute chat last year, Jones articulated the matter at the heart of the current battle over Langer’s time as Australia’s coach: “Now listen, Alex Ferguson stayed at Manchester United forever, Wayne Bennett is still going at 71, that gives you 20 more years in the job. You ready for it?”
Langer: “Well this is my second year without my family for Christmas. If COVID goes away, you never know old mate. I love my job, I’ll let my actions do the talking.”
Here is the central point. Langer, having reached what he sees as the pinnacle of coaching in cricket, has repeatedly told those close to him that he wants to remain in the job for a long, long time. Largely, this is because he cannot see any other role out there that would satisfy him. Satisfy, or compel – Langer has spent plenty of the past four years feeling miserable, pressured and at times even unwell.
He spoke at length in 2019 about his wife Sue breaking down at the breakfast table one morning as she told him she did not like what the job was doing to him. But the centre of Australian cricket is where Langer and his many friends think he should be. Moreover, it is where they think he deserves to be.
Unfortunately for Langer, and to the evident disgust of the former teammates whom he thanked for their support at the time he was inducted to the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame last week, Cricket Australia had no such plan for an imperial reign by the coach.
In 2018, Langer was appointed for four years with a specific brief. He was to help resuscitate the flagging reputation of the men’s national team after the Newlands scandal, and provide leadership as the Test side looked for a new long-term captain. While Tim Paine remained, the arrangement worked well enough, even if players and staff chafed at Langer’s micromanagement in concert with his close friend, the team manager Gavin Dovey.
Last year, after the team failed to beat India at home, mounting discontent with the team environment culminated in the airing of dirty laundry in the press. A subsequent emergency meeting was called between CA’s chief executive Nick Hockley, its then chair Earl Eddings, and the team leaders Paine, Aaron Finch and Pat Cummins.
As a consequence, Langer took more of a back seat, an overseer’s role during the subsequent World Cup and Ashes campaigns, and in a less feverish environment, the players flourished. To Langer’s crew, this was proof he can adapt and stay on as coach for the long tenure he desires.
But to senior players, support staff and likely CA’s leaders, it mounted a case for the choice of a quieter, man-managing figure to work as the adjutant to the captains alongside senior assistants Andrew McDonald, Michael Di Venuto and Jeff Vaughan.
Accusations of “player power” and an “eastern states cartel” are easy to hurl around in the fractured, states-rights Australia of 2022. But they mistakenly ascribe to cricket coaches the exalted roles enjoyed by their counterparts in the football codes, where the likes of Ferguson, Bennett and Alastair Clarkson move the players as though chess pieces from on high.
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