REACTION: Ponting tees off at 'embarrassing' CA, Pat Cummins called out for 'garbage' by Hayden

Justin Langer’s manager says the “views of a faceless few” have driven the World Cup and Ashes-winning coach out of his job four months ahead of the end of his contract, while his former skipper, Ricky Ponting, called Cricket Australia’s treatment of Langer “embarrassing”.

Langer took over the team in the wake of the sandpaper affair and had an at times fractious relationship with key members of the team. The demise of Tim Paine and the rise of Pat Cummins this year might ultimately be the decision that culminated in the fall of Langer.
The coach quit his job on Saturday, effective immediately.

Langer’s former opening partner Matthew Hayden put Cummins’ role in the spotlight on ABC Radio on Saturday.

“How do you reckon he’d be going? To hear the Australian captain offer no support and commendation. How would you feel?” said Hayden.

“And now we hear Pat Cummins saying, ‘This is a high performance environment, we all go through a high performance review’. I’m sorry Pat but that’s garbage … this just reeks of being orchestrated.”

Langer’s former Test and state teammate Damien Martyn tweeted: “It’s crazy … Took us from our darkest days to here.”

And Mitchell Johnson wrote on Instagram: “It‘s very disappointing to watch the treatment of one of the very best humans in cricket, on & off the field. Makes you wonder how the future looks & also makes you wonder why would you want to coach the Australian cricket team.”

Insiders suggest Langer has been pushed to the fringes of the team’s decision-making as it won the T20 World Cup and stormed to a 4-0 Ashes win.

Langer wanted a long term extension but players were seemingly adamant his time was up.

James Henderson, principal of agency DSEG, tweeted on Saturday: “As a player Justin retired on top after a 5-0 Ashes whitewash.

“Today, despite the views of a faceless few, he finishes his time as Australian cricket coach winning the T20 World Cup and the Ashes. Lest we forget what JL took over in 2018.”

While Henderson didn’t say if the faceless few were players, CA board members or included both, the player discontent has been an open secret in the game, although often puzzling to fans as they watched the team have success under Langer.

Cummins had been asked repeatedly about Langer’s situation. His measured corporate speak infuriated some and appeased others. The truth is it was always crafted to never offend his coach and supporters, yet did just that.

On Friday, as Cricket Australia met and the heat rose on Langer, Cummins’ wrote a newspaper piece – on climate change.

It has been suggested to me that captains and coaches should operate as partners and share the same term – four years seems enough. Cummins is likely to get a man he wants to work with.

It has always been the case that the Australian cricket team votes as a block and stands behind the captain of the day.

In 2004 I launched Inside Cricket magazine and we poked gentle fun at Ricky Ponting in a lighthearted column. Ponting was furious, cancelled a scheduled interview, and banned every player in the Test team from talking to us. It needed intervention from then CA communications boss Peter Young to bring them back on board.

There is no doubt Langer is a genuine, emotionally connected man who has a lot of friends and admirers – notably among his former teammates of the early 2000s.

Ponting was one of the first to react. He sounded anything but a man considered a possible Langer replacement in some quarters.

“It’s a really sad day as far as Australian cricket’s concerned,” Ponting told ABC Radio.

“It’s been a really poor six months with the way Cricket Australia have handled some of the better people in Australian cricket.

“Those being Justin Langer and Tim Paine (at the start of the summer).

“I think it’s been almost embarrassing the way they handled those two cases.

“[It] sounds like he mustn’t have had the full backing of the board,” Ponting said.

“He was very keen to continue on in the role, as he should’ve been, having just won a T20 World Cup and the 4-0 result in the Ashes.

“It seems like a very strange time for a coach to be departing. Reading the tea leaves, it seems, as he would say, a very small group of the playing group and he believes a couple of staff around the team, haven’t loved the way he’s gone about it.

“And that’s been enough to force a man that’s put his life heart and soul into Australian cricket and done what I believe is a sensational job in turning around the culture and the way the Australian cricket team has been looked at over the last three or four years. It’s been enough to push him out of his dream job.”

Ponting also had a take on Cummins’ role in Langer’s exit saying he was disappointed he hadn’t fully publicly backed the coach, while understand the difficult position Cummins was in.

“Pat’s been put in a pretty difficult situation as captain,” Ponting said.

“If it’s not just him, if there are other players that are coming to him to let him know that they feel Justin’s not the right man, then I think that puts Pat in a difficult position.

“Never in my time as a player did [we], as a playing group, influence what a board was thinking as far as appointments.

“I might have got asked an opinion here or there on a certain coach, but it seems like the players and, maybe, a couple of other personnel around the Australian cricket team might have influenced Cricket Australia into making the decision that they have.”

Ponting meanwhile said he was against the idea of splitting the job into three for Test, 50 over and T20 squads.

“If you can find the right person that’s willing to give up 10 or 11 months of their year to be the full-time Australian cricket coach then, in an ideal world, that’s the person you would go for,” Ponting said.

“[As a player] I’d want the same coach. I’d want to be hearing similar messages day in and day out. The most important thing is the relationship between the player and the coach and, if you start putting two or three people in those roles, I think there can be a lot more confusion there than there needs to be.”

Ponting added Cricket Australia had an issue with internal disputes becoming public knowledge.

“There’s so many of these incidents,” Ponting said. “The general public would sit back and say, ‘What on earth are they doing here? Why are they handling these situations like they are?’”

It is not just former players who felt the warm embrace of Langer’s emotional approach to life.

But his mood swings and shifts in intensity have caused issues with this generation of players, who connect more to the technical and restrained methods of his assistant Andrew McDonald.

There is no doubt that Cricket Australia’s handling of the matter missed the mark – although how much of that was down to Langer hanging on when his situation became obvious is open to debate.

Early reaction clearly paints Langer as a victim. He might head to England to pick up that vacant role, being a friend of their king maker Andrew Strauss. But if Langer can lead a team to such success and still not connect with the players, Strauss is smart enough to realise that.