In 2008, Justin Langer wrote a book about overcoming adversity.
In Seeing the Sunrise, his personality is patent. In the opening pages he quotes Ron Barassi and Vince Lombardi, and he likens his cricket career to that of a martial artist. Barassi celebrated his 75th birthday by hiking the Kokoda Track. By the time you finish the book, you see why Justin venerates him.
As a player, Langer was a fighter and a scrapper. He spent his first Test innings avoiding missiles sent down by Ian Bishop. He spent his 100th Test in hospital dyeing his pillow velvet. Most sane individuals, when confronted with the pressure and sheer physical danger of it, would have questioned if such a caper was worth it.
Langer, on the other hand, and despite all that, averaged in the 40s. He became one half of his country’s greatest opening partnership. Yet such was the era of Australian cricket, he always seemed to be batting for his spot.
He was never more than a few failures away from cricketing oblivion. It is that experience that told him he needed to stare down the peril, to meet fire with fire, and to dig in, lest he be another state cricketer angling for a job in insurance.
Men like Langer often covet head coaching jobs. They have the ambition and lust for legacy that’s required to justify the commitment. They’re willing to eschew all other aspects of their lives for it. More often than not, they’re martinets, with a Churchilian ability to ignore the whingers, the whisperers and the malcontents.
So, in January, when word first filtered out of the Australian dressing room that players were at their wits end with Langer, he was eager to front-foot the issue. He went straight to media street. The company line was that he would welcome the feedback, and who wouldn’t have told Marnus Laubuschagne to jettison his toasted sandwich before taking the field, anyway?
Was Sandwichgate the beginning of JL’s downfall?
(Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)
But there was always more to be gleaned. The Grade Cricketer’s Sam Perry, who would be privy to some of the more candid conversations in Australian cricket, said: “Some of the stories that are emerging, and some of the views of players, are astonishing in their contempt. It goes back a long way. And my question is: ‘how does it reconcile?’”
Those players had just been interviewed by a leadership consultant for an end-of-season review. It found what many Australian sports had grappled with a long time ago — that the players wanted more control over the team and its values, more ownership. The players also wanted their coach to, in The Age’s words, “delegate and lighten up.”
But ceding any sort of control would fly in the face of Langer’s coaching philosophy. To read anything about him is to learn that he’s managerial. From all reports he’s like an overbearing parent, one who wants to tell you life’s answers before you discover life’s questions.
He’s been where his players have been, he’s faced those demons, he’s worked them out. He knows how to steer this ship, if you would just give him the wheel. He’s only trying to help.
If wins papers over cracks, losses reveal them. By August there was water on Australian cricket’s boat. The team went to the West Indies and Bangladesh and went about as poorly as expected. Langer pilloried a digital content creator. Malcolm Conn wrote a puzzling piece about how he was treated in a similar role.
And there was yet more widespread news of player disaffection, especially when the coach questioned a hat-trick-taking debutant about his choice of wrist-wear.
Many of Langer’s former teammates then became convinced – and to a large degree, still are – that those dressing room leaks were the entire problem, that these copiously-compensated cricketers lack the wherewithal to stomach a spray, and were making calculated efforts to undermine their coach. As if players and their people weren’t simply speaking openly to journalists as they had always done.
All this against a backdrop: almost all other sports, and aspects of life, have become more benevolent. The stories of VFL coaches in years gone by – men Jonathan Horn calls “monumental hardarses” – are well mythologised. But the world has changed, people have changed, athletes have changed.
Teams have also understood they need their stars — to sell tickets and hope — more than they need their coach.
Do the players now hold too much power in Australian cricket? (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)
If a playing group was a proletariat, it could band together to overthrow almost any coaching panel it saw fit. Even Ross Lyon, one of the most autocratic Australian coaches of this century, says he would now approach the job in an entirely different fashion, because coaching has become about relationships and connection and vulnerability, and about emboldening players to ride a wave rather than telling them how to surf.
Test cricket has barely come to terms with the concept of a coach. It’s hardly surprising given days of yore. Team meetings in Ian Chappell’s day consisted of him asking his bowlers to hit the top of off stump before they all “knocked the top off a beer”. All other bowling plans were devised between balls, and between the wicketkeeper and second slip.
Invariably, the players get their man. Langer’s ex-teammates have promptly broadcasted their flinch reactions on radio, social media and in the broadsheets. This is a results business, after all.
Or is it?
Preeminent mindset coach Ben Crowe, who must be the man most responsible for Australian sport’s recent enlightenment, would probably tell you that results are outcomes and out of your control. What is within your control, and therefore worth focusing on, is your mindset, the words you tell yourself every day. That is how one finds meaning and purpose: by finding it in the activity itself, not by attaching it to an outcome.
This has been Langer’s biggest failing.
He may have all the results. But he has failed to curb his capriciousness.
He has failed to cultivate the right culture. He has failed to convince his players that the end justifies his means.
And he has been dead in the water for some time.
Maybe Cricket should go back to the days the Captain was the boss, both on and off the field. People forget that a Cricket 'Coach' is a fairly new phenomenon.
Once Upon a Time on the Roar
Roar Guru
Your reply is still undergoing torture - hasn't broken under the strain yet it seems ...
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
So you're saying we have players whose mentality is 20 years behind their ages. ------- All 3 of your assertions apply to one player. Perhaps he needed stepping on but all the players? That's a long bow and a somewhat jaundiced view on responsibility of our national team. Most of those guys busted a nut getting there and to cast them all like that is a blunt assessment at best.
No9
Roar Rookie
When the players had a good deal more autonomy the result was sandpapergate . When the players had a good deal more autonomy the result was bogan sledging . When the players had a good deal more autonomy the result was a dust up in the tunnel in SA Sweet Jesu ! Need I go on ?
Marty
Roar Rookie
Yep fair enough but I suppose the point I’m making is that these are all examples of what can happen when there’s no one pulling players into line when it’s required. Personally I had more of an issue with the behaviour leading up to Cape Town than the incident itself. You can play aggressively and get the job done without a constant barrage of mindless, personal abuse, as we have seen over the last couple of years. I don’t think there will be a repeat of CT any time soon but I’ll be interested to see if Warner can keep that mouth of his in check.
JamesH
Roar Guru
This is a beautifully written article, Denam, and while I don't necessarily agree with every single point, I think you've generally hit the nail on the head. This isn't 1990. The Rocket Eades of the world will never succeed in a modern, professional coaching environment. People can call it ego, call it entitlement, call it whatever they want. Ultimately, if you treat modern athletes like schoolchildren they will push back. Discipline was the key requirement after Cape Town, in order to rebuild faith in the side, but we're past that now. An iron fist alone doesn't make someone a good coach. As for the idea that, absent Langer's firm hand, the team will go back to the culture that resulted in Sandpapergate - well, that seems an absurdly long bow. Nothing I have seen from Pat Cummins suggests he would allow something like that to fester under his watch. There's absolutely no reason to think his leadership will be as ineffectual as the Smith/Warner combo was. Cummins must have known that his refusal to endorse Langer would go down like a lead balloon with certain people, and yet he was still willing to stand by his belief that a change was needed in order for the side to find its best. To me, that at least shows strength in his own convictions. Of course, none of this mean's he's right. He'll have to live and die by those convictions now. Good luck to him.
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
My reply went to the Politburro
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
The broken arm issue and the Warner attack dog thing were definitely testosterone on steroids, granted, but that does not lead to cheating. I've played footy, cricket and hockey with and against some hotheaded amigos but cheating was a thing l can't recall. I've got hotheaded on the pitch too. ------- To link DW's cheating to aggressive play is to say using MJ leads to intravenous H use. It never did in my case or many I've known. -------- Boof had an uncompromising attitude but cheating is not his thing. I imagine in a few years DW will mea-culpa the whole saga. But don't hold ya breath waiting for a Scorpio to come clean easily.
Marty
Roar Rookie
Revisionism? There were major concerns being raised about player behaviour and team culture prior to Cape Town, and had been for a number of years. Those raising the concerns were either dismissed as not understanding how tough international cricket was or told to trust that the players knew where the line was, which turned out to be a load of rubbish. As far as Boof goes I agree he seems like a nice enough kind of guy and is a product of his time however he was also happy to sit back and let Warner do his attack dog thing.
Rowdy
Roar Rookie
The equivalence of “toxic team culture” leading to the ball tampering was not engendered by Boof. Boof is a hard and fair cricket man. He did not engender a toxic culture. It wasn’t called toxic at the time and is revisionism born of the ball tampering. I defy anyone to accuse the man of such; to his face. ——- As l said on another post the ball tampering was one man seeking revenge. The captain weakly / meekly warned against it and the coach had no information on that and that it was a momentary lapse of reason, at best, by the author of the ball tampering. One DW. To link it it to the unicorn-like, and at the time, unidentified toxic culture is revisionism.
Ed Gein
Roar Rookie
Unless CA gets the next coaching appointment exactly right, I have a feeling it's all going to go pear-shaped in a hurry. No doubt the players who wanted Langer out, now have a sense of emboldenment - a potentially dangerous thing for any new coach.
Insult_2_Injury
Roar Rookie
That's the criteria for running a workplace now is it?
U
Roar Rookie
It gets to a certain point where he’s out of touch at his age with the current team. A lot has changed since Langer retired 15 years ago
Marty
Roar Rookie
Who said anything about wielding a stick? I’m talking about having some basic structures and understandings in place to ensure that things don’t get out of hand, like they did last time. Whether that involves Langer or someone else is beside the point, the players need to understand that they are not a law unto themselves. Pretty standard stuff in most elite team sport environments, why should they be any different, particularly considering they’ve already stuffed it up once?
Jeff
Roar Rookie
Yep. And pretty much the same playing core too. That CA would even listen to their complaints to the extent of forcing Langer out - if this in fact was the case - would be gobsmacking in CA's incompetence given what CA went through just 4 years ago and the scramble they were forced to make to fix it. However, I think the author - and some sports journos - have beaten that angle up to be more than what it is as a reason for Langer's departure. The fact is CA wasn't prepared to have the senior coach in the position for 8 years. Not since the days of John Buchanan has the Australian coach served that many years. In that same time since Buchanan, NONE of the head coaches of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, England, West Indies or South Africa have had coaching stints as long as what has been offered to Langer. Not one of them. Not Mickey Arthur, not Gary Kirsten, not Trevor Bayliss, not Andy Flower, not Ravi Shastri, etc etc etc. Only Mike Hesson of NZ exceeds the time offered to Langer; Hesson was coach just under 6 years.
DaveJ
Roar Rookie
“He has failed to convince his players that the end justifies his means.“ Wasn’t that the whole point of changing the culture after sandpapergate? I suspect you by means you mean working with his management style. But I’m sure you’re on the track in general about his management style, though I would hesitate to make black and white pronouncements that it was a bad team culture. Why did Cameron Green say he would love Langer to stay on, which was actually naively naughty of him?
Jero
Roar Rookie
At what point do doubters move past Sandpapergate, and view the players as either reformed or reformable, without someone wielding a stick at them? Is it upon retirement of certain individuals or every single player in that XI, until enough years have flowed under the bridge as judged by the doubters, when the players are satisfactorily redeemed in the minds of the doubters, upon the appointment of a new captain, never at all, perhaps? I'm actually curious.
Redcap
Roar Guru
Really good read, thanks Denam.
Insult_2_Injury
Roar Rookie
'....that the players wanted more control over the team and its values, more ownership.' So there's no place for someone to set the ethos of a team, or bounce off the Captain who is deep in the fray in cricket? But there's room for a million backroom staff! It should be interesting for the public to assess this team ethos by committee. There's nothing surer than when the team is performing badly then the press will be lining up to eat away at the decisions or lack of and I can guarantee you the press will designate a figurehead and go after them. Everyone will need to be available for comment and explain the groupthink, there's no filter and no room for banalities, the team decides the game the public gets, then they must explain everything. The tone has been set by CA, the team wants ownership...........good luck with that!
Marty
Roar Rookie
Some interesting takes on the situation, however what is not mentioned is the fact that the players had been given greater control over the ‘team and its values’ under Boof. What was the result? One of the most toxic team cultures that we have seen that culminated in the events in Cape Town, bringing Australia cricket to its lowest point. They had their opportunity and blew it. Is it any wonder that people have reservations about the same individuals being put back in charge?