Justin Langer Resigns: Langer’s opening partner blasts CRICKET AUSTRALIA- A tearful Matthew Hayden has slammed the national players for not publicly supporting Justin Langer in the lead-up to his resignation as Australia’s chief coach. Meanwhile, World Cup twice winning captain Ricky Ponting said he was embarrassed and labelled it as sad day in Cricket Australia. Follow InsideSport.IN for more updates
Justin Langer Resigns: Langer’s opening partner blasts CRICKET AUSTRALIA, says ‘complete rubbish’, Ponting calls its ‘embarassing’
“If he was waiting for the current Australian cricket team to be presenting a face of care, I dare say they won’t be and that’s, to me, the real sadness around this,” an emotional Hayden told ABC Sport.
Handed the captaincy following Tim Paine’s unceremonious exit, Pat Cummins didn’t endorse Langer as coach and had insisted that reviewing his suitability for the role was fair in a “high-performance environment”.
Hayden was critical of Cummins, who was one of the players who had raised concerns about Langer’s coaching style last year and also described the whole evaluation process as unhealthy.
Matthew Hayden was on the verge of tears while talking about Langer’s resignation on Summer Grandstand.
Hayden expressed disappointment with Cummins too, for his lack of support after the coach had turned the team’s reputation around.
📷: Fox Sports #JustinLanger #cricket pic.twitter.com/hqJrpVfQqY
— ABC SPORT (@abcsport) February 5, 2022
“This was not a healthy process,” said the 50-year-old, who had formed a formidable opening pair with Langer during his playing days.
“This was a bloke (Langer) that won the Ashes, stayed back basically in Melbourne for the entire time while this dragged on for a month. The whole thing just reeks of being orchestrated from basically the moment all of this garbage started coming out in the middle of last year.
“You could see that the writing was on the wall. If I had a bet back then that Justin Langer would have retained his spot at the end of his contract, I would have put my whole life’s savings on him not doing it.”
Langer, under whose guidance Australia won the T20 World Cup and the Ashes series 4-0, stepped down on Saturday after facing complaints from players about his coaching style for months.
On Friday, Langer had a long meeting with the Board, which offered him a short-term extension but he decided to decline the offer.
Hayden came down heavily on Cricket Australia (CA), saying it along with the players need to be blamed for the way reports of dissatisfaction about Langer’s coaching became public.
“It is such a leaking boat, this so-called high-performance culture within cricket. There is no inner sanctum anymore,” he said.
Justin Langer Resigns: Langer’s opening partner blasts CRICKET AUSTRALIA, says ‘complete rubbish’, Ponting calls its ‘embarassing’
Langer was handed the reins of Australian cricket after the infamous ball-tampering scandal in 2018.
Cricket Australia has today accepted the resignation of men’s team head coach Justin Langer. pic.twitter.com/BhjrN9kuF3
— Cricket Australia (@CricketAus) February 5, 2022
But Hayden said CA showed no respect for how Langer managed the team in the aftermath of that scandal.
Langer had welcomed Steve Smith and David Warner back into the team after the end of their one-year suspensions in 2019.
“Where would Davey Warner be right now if Justin Langer wasn’t the coach? Where would Steve Smith be? Remember when they came back in after their year’s suspension … JL spent forever around those two guys.”
“We, the Australian cricket community, loved Justin because he came in and said, ‘No way, what we’re going to do is play this game in a manner that is going to make Australians proud again,'” he said.
Following Langer’s departure, assistant coach Andrew McDonald has been appointed as the interim coach.
Andrew McDonald will step up into the role of interim head coach of our men’s national team, with official duties beginning with Australia’s upcoming T20I series against Sri Lanka. pic.twitter.com/BW3j4PBPrf
— Cricket Australia (@CricketAus) February 5, 2022
Justin Langer Resigns: Ponting calls its ‘embarassing’- Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting on Saturday said that Justin Langer’s resignation as head coach marks a sad day for Australian cricket.
Cricket Australia on Saturday accepted men’s team head coach Justin Langer’s resignation. “Justin was offered a short-term extension to his current contract, which sadly he has opted not to accept,” stated an official Cricket Australia release.
“It is a really sad day as far as Australian cricket is concerned and if you look back it has been a really poor six months on the whole in the way that Cricket Australia has handled some of the better people in the Australian cricket – Justin Langer and Tim Paine – and I think it’s been almost embarrassing the way they have handled those two cases,” Ponting told ABC Radio, as reported by ESPNcricinfo.
“He mustn’t have had the full backing of the board. Me knowing Justin the way that I do, he was very keen to continue in the role, as he should have been after what’s been the best coaching period of his international career having just won the T20 World Cup and then the 4-0 result in the Ashes,” he added.
The contract extension offered to Justin was the result of a thorough review process that evaluated many factors including future requirements of the team and the upcoming extensive schedule of fixtures. The extension was approved by the CA Board and was put to Justin last night. It included the opportunity to defend the T20 World Cup title in Australia at the end of this year.
“It seems like a very strange time for a coach to be departing. Reading the tea leaves it sounds like a few – and as he [Langer] says to me a small group in the playing group and a couple of other staff around the team – haven’t entirely loved the way he has gone about it,” said Ponting.
“That’s been enough to force a man who has put his life and heart and soul into Australian cricket and done a sensational job at turning around the culture and the way the Australian team has been looked at in the last few years to push him out of the job,” he added.
Langer was appointed as the men’s team coach in 2018 after the Sandpaper Gate which saw David Warner, Steve Smith serving out one-year bans. Under Langer, Australia managed to win the T20 World Cup 2021 and then the Ashes.
“Justin is a great mate of mine and I know how passionate he is about the Australian coaching job and that he wanted to continue on and be the best coach and have the best cricket team in the world. I think Pat also has been put in a difficult situation as captain, if it’s not just him and it is other players coming to him and letting him know that maybe they think Justin is not the right man then I think that puts Pat in a difficult position as well,” said Ponting.
“If he had got on the front foot and endorsed Justin they would not have been in a position to move him on. I am close to Justin, we are like brothers but I have not got too heavily involved in this, as much as giving him a pat on the back and put an arm around him here and there, there was no way I could change the way this was heading. What’s happened today I’ve felt was coming for quite a while, even looking back before the T20 World Cup there was a lot of speculation there,” he added.
Former Australian pacer Mitchell Johnson was also left fuming after learning about Langer’s resignation.
“You’ve got to look at some facts and the facts are JL has done an extremely good job. He got the team out of a very dark place,” he said.
“I just feel like he has been forced into this. I don’t blame him.
“I think the mess that’s happened throughout this whole contract debacle has been disgusting and I feel like it has just gotten to him, and I think it is a bit of a token gesture by Cricket Australia.”
Justin Langer Resigns: Langer’s opening partner blasts CRICKET AUSTRALIA, says ‘complete rubbish’, Ponting calls its ‘embarassing’
Besides McDonald, Trevor Bayliss, Jason Gillespie, Ricky Ponting, Greg Shipperd and Michael Di Venuto are the other leading candidates to replace Langer as Australia’s chief coach.
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