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Opinion
In the words of Tony Crafter when Dennis Lillee and Javed Miandad floated the idea of lowering a cage onto the WACA and starting a whole new cricketing format, for God’s sake, everyone calm down.
Had you been following the feverish commentary by pundit, punter and ex-player alike on the saga of Justin Langer’s contract or lack thereof, you might have quite reasonably come away with the idea that the departure of Langer from the national coaching position was simultaneously the most fiendish act of treason since Benedict Arnold switched sides, the worst sporting decision since Garrick Morgan switched codes and the cruellest treatment of a decent man since the first act of RoboCop.
Of course if you’d managed to follow the commentary without succumbing to the seductive lure of the pitchfork, you might have instead come to the conclusion that what happened was this: a coach came to the end of his contract, some of those he’d coached expressed the opinion that he was not their preferred choice for the future, the ruling body therefore somewhat clumsily made it clear he wasn’t in their long-term plans and the coach resigned in order to make a clean break.
It was not the most edifying spectacle, watching it play out in public, and that there have been more elegant and harmonious partings of ways cannot be denied. But neither was it an act of unprecedented bastardry or the death knell of the true spirit of Australian cricket, no matter what certain retired players who never heard of taking a deep breath and counting to ten might say.
(Photo by Jonathan DiMaggio/Getty Images for the Australian Cricketers’ Association
Some things seem obvious. The fact that Justin Langer did good work in helping the Australian team move toward redemption after the sandpaper affair is surely beyond doubt. For that horrible moment in cricket history, he was the right man.
It’s also beyond doubt that the on-field results of the Langer tenure were mixed at best. The performance at the 2019 World Cup was disappointing, the retention of the Ashes a worthy achievement but the 2-2 scoreline not as good as it should have been, and the defeat at home by an Indian team not at full strength a great disappointment.
Few other things can be known with certainty. From outside the Australian camp the best we can do is conjecture. Luckily that’s our favourite game, so we’ve all been engaging in it with unbounded enthusiasm. But if by any chance anyone wants to think about the Langer issue with a touch of sobriety rather than in as red-faced a manner as possible, perhaps a few points might be considered that have hitherto been mostly overlooked.
For a start, we all know that some of the players under Langer’s tutelage grew weary of his style and of his moods. It’s said that after Langer was confronted with this fact, he changed his style, stepped back and was less intense, and the success of the T20 World Cup and the home Ashes series followed. This could be an endorsement of the new, more relaxed JL. It could just as easily be an endorsement of the player view that Australia plays better when Langer is less involved.
We can’t really know without access to the inner sanctum, and that’s kind of the point: among those commenting on the topic there is a varying level of knowledge of what goes on in the dressing room, but nobody is as much of an expert on the workings of the current Australian team as the members of that team are.
The second point to bear in mind is this: the opinions of the coach’s best buddies may make for juicy headlines, but they really don’t count for much if you want to find out the truth. So the guys who played alongside JL for years reckon he’s awesome? You don’t say!
Cricket Australia is, as we all know, far from an infallible organisation, but it would be a much much worse one if, in its deliberations on appointing a coach, it gave any weight at all to what the candidates’ mates reckon. Or to put it another way: if Matthew Hayden is reduced to tears when talking about the Australian coaching job, maybe Matthew Hayden isn’t the most impartial judge you can find.
Furthermore, it’s pretty important to bear in mind the fact that an international cricket coach is not a position equivalent to the head coach of a football club. The coach of an NRL or AFL team is the big boss – the ultimate dictator, lord of all he surveys. The coach of the Australian cricket team is the most senior member of the support staff helping out the players. He’s not in charge and he shouldn’t be in charge. If the exit of Justin Langer is a course correction in the way the team is organised, similar to Mark Taylor’s reassertion of the captain’s primacy – and putting Bob Simpson back in his box – upon taking over from Allan Border, that may very well be all to the good.
The next point is that, no, as a matter of fact results are not the only thing that matters. From the outside wins and losses are what we judge coaches – and players – on because we have so little else to go on. On the inside indications of players’ unhappiness and team disharmony matter too, not least because they’re a good sign that even if results are strong now, they won’t be for long. A coach’s job isn’t just to win games, it’s to nurture players and help create a strong and united team.
In light of the above-mentioned point regarding the difference between cricket and footy coaches, the behind-the-scenes jobs – the ones that aren’t easily measured in wins and losses – are even more crucial to judging a coach’s performance.
And finally, in regard to attacks on Pat Cummins, most notably by Mitchell Johnson, who ripped into the Test captain like Langer was a puppy and Cummins just backed over him, a couple of points: firstly that it’s not true that Cummins refused to offer any endorsement of the coach and secondly that it’s not true that it’s the captain’s job to tell the board who the coach should be. The idea that players need to be blindly loyal to their coach was not one in currency during Johnson’s career, so why he’s trying to popularise it now is a mystery.
None of which is to say that Cricket Australia definitely got it right. They could have been more decisive. They could have been more direct. They could have dithered less. But dithering is what administrators do. In the annals of sporting history CA’s actions won’t go down as anything so extraordinary, just as another case of protracted clumsiness by a bunch of suits in executing a pretty standard process. Possibly they will look like idiots in six months. Possibly they will look like geniuses. It’s likely neither will be accurate.
Maybe Langer was unfairly treated. Maybe he wasn’t. But either way, coaches come and coaches go, and not every departure has to be met with hysteria, even if you didn’t want it to happen.
So come on. Settle, petals.