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Justin Langer has revealed his life as a coach may be over.
Following his departure from leading the national cricket Test side, an emotional Langer spoke candidly with The Australian’s Peter Lalor and Gideon Haigh on the podcast Cricket Et Cetera, admitting there may be no future for him at the top given what he has just endured.
“I don’t think I’ll coach again. No, I don’t think I’ll coach again,” said the former Australia coach.
“The craziness is – and it’s really strange in cricket – if you think about a lot of the other codes, the best coaches are a lot older. It doesn’t make sense in cricket.
“I say I’m not going to coach again, but I reckon I’m 10 years off being the best coach I could be. I honestly reckon – because things don’t shock you, things don’t surprise you (the more experienced you get).”
Langer went on to explain how the noise surrounding his exit from the top job “literally broke my heart.”
“The hardest thing about my last 12 months, and I say it hand on heart, was there was this narrative that I hated the players or the players hated me back. That literally broke my heart,” said Langer.
“Everything I’ve done for literally the whole time – when I was in Western Australia coaching the Scorchers, when I was with Phil Hughes when I first started and with Steve Smith, I came up with them as kids (when I was) an assistant coach (was because I loved the players).”
Some cricket fans who believed in the narrative about unrest in the squad were happy to see Langer’s departure, with the latest series of ‘The Test’ giving an insight into what they saw as a poor coaching style. Many won’t be giving him the sympathy he seems to be seeking.
But Langer was adamant that despite what others felt about the way he coached, he loved his team.
“Some of the players may not have liked my style. I am serious, I can be intense. But they know how much I loved them and they loved me back.
“I kept reading this narrative and it literally broke my heart.
“That’s why when you ask if I’ll be a better coach next time, for my family I am not sure I can go through that again.”
Langer maintains that he still holds “very special relationships” with players from the Australian group.
“My kids love me unconditionally. As a coach sometimes you have to do that. You’ve got to pull them into line. You have to have the bigger picture in mind,” said Langer.
“Some people aren’t going to like that and because they’re not your kids they’re going to say ‘well he’s disposable’.
“That’s fine. That’s life. But that’s the killer.”
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