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Justin Langer was the perfect coach for the Australian cricket team, until the game left him behind

What comes to mind when you think of Justin Langer?

There's the modern version — cap backwards and barefoot on the outfield grass, all mindfulness and elite honesty and an arm around every shoulder.

Maybe it's the other side you see, the one with that too-familiar scowl and a look in the eye that could clear a room, or at least flip a Headingley rubbish bin.

But if you want one defining image of Justin Langer, one version that sums up what Test cricket and his country and the baggy green all mean to him, you have to go back to the Hobart Test of 1999.

In the midst of an improbable comeback, Shoaib Akhtar has just flushed him in the helmet with a bouncer of incomprehensible speed. In an instant, the camera gets in close enough to clock Langer's reaction.

A smile. Langer grins from ear to ear, with one false tooth missing, as he strolls down the pitch to tell batting partner Adam Gilchrist how much he loves this game.

Langer made his reputation as a player in moments like that. He would take as many blows to the body as was required to contribute to his beloved team. He would take a thousand Akhtar bumpers to the head before letting his mates down.

He wasn't alone in that era. That was Steve Waugh's Australia, when unprecedented success was predicated on the generational skills of a few and the unwavering devotion to the cause of the others.

Nothing has meant more to Justin Langer than the Australian cricket team. It's why within months of his playing career ending, his journey to the position of head coach began.

Langer started as a batting coach for the national team, then amid one of countless reviews and reshuffles, moved on to take over Western Australia and eventually the Perth Scorchers.

A favourite son of the parochial West, Langer was an instant success. Within a few years he was almost unanimously considered Australia's next head coach.

The man for the moment

Then Australian cricket blew up. In the wake of the Cape Town disaster, when a small piece of sandpaper provoked a national reckoning, Langer's inevitable promotion came sooner than expected and with significant baggage.

But the consensus was Langer was exactly the man for the moment. With Australian cricket at a crossroads, who better to reinstall the values of its golden age? To teach this troubled team what playing Test cricket for Australia really meant?

Early glimpses into his coaching style, many of which were provided by Amazon's documentary series The Test, were aggressively on brand.

His first act as coach of Australia was to take his squad to the World War I battlefields of France before a one-day international series against England. It was a move out of the Waugh playbook, who in 2001 took a squad to the beaches of Gallipoli.

But while the public-facing interviews were passionate and wholesome — albeit a bit David Brent at times — inside camp, the first cracks were starting to show.

There were run-ins with Usman Khawaja, ostracised for reasons unknown. As shown in The Test, it was Khawaja who would first confront Langer about his management style.

Khawaja's observation back in 2018, which read like foreshadowing now, was that players were "intimidated" by Langer and were "walking on eggshells" around him.

You could see that in footage of players relaxing and enjoying themselves in the change room, only to abruptly stop and slink away when Langer arrived like a teacher into a classroom.

In hindsight, those throwaway clips and conversations were the beginning of the end for Langer.

Years of bubbling tension came to a head in the middle of 2021 when Langer's own players interjected. Some would call it an intervention, others a full-blown mutiny, but the leaders of the playing group sat their coach down and confronted him.

His intensity was overbearing. His mood swings too unpredictable. The workload and physical demands of his players had become too much.

In many ways the criticism could be seen as justified. There really is no smoke without fire in these situations, and indeed if those key players saw the situation as urgent enough to inject themselves into it then their reasons for doing so must have been sound.

But Langer isn't entirely to blame here either. Because he hadn't changed, the game had.

Players were committed to franchises and tournaments all over the world, and were often burnt out by the time they got to camp. Science and analytics had taken coaching away from "work bloody hard and watch the bloody ball". Athletes across all sports are more comfortable than ever demanding a certain working environment and speaking out when they feel they don't have it.

It's why this whole issue has turned into a battle of generations. The likes of Ricky Ponting and Matthew Hayden are heartbroken and furious on behalf of their mate, but also on behalf of cricket as they know it to be.

But inside the current group of players, support has been conspicuously absent. Every time Pat Cummins told the media what a good bloke Langer was, it must have felt like another dagger in the back.

There was no way back for Langer after that meeting in August last year. It was only a matter of whether his position would be vacated when his contracted ended in June 2022 or if he would move on sooner.

That isn't to say the players are the villains in this story either. Sporting teams change coaches when the players no longer feel completely and utterly aligned with their vision. It's true of every sport.

This is even more relevant considering the position the Australian Test team finds itself in, on the cusp of a rebuild with key figures teetering closer to retirement and with a new generation of players rising to take their place.

It is not unreasonable for them to feel the current leadership was not the one to make the future the best it could be.

CA silence hangs Langer and players out to dry

The only shame is that the vacuum created by Cricket Australia's persistent silence on the issue had to be filled by player vs coach speculation. It put both parties in an awful situation, one they should never have been placed in. It's somewhat remarkable the team has enjoyed the success it has over the past six months.

Cricket Australia's belated press release on Saturday afternoon confirmed a short-term contract was offered to Langer. It would have been done so in the knowledge he was never going to accept it.

And so Langer has been forced to cut the cord, and players like Cummins are forced to face the music for a debacle that could and should have been handled in house over the course of the past few months.

So what's next?

Andrew McDonald has been swiftly appointed the interim coach of Australia, and there is every chance that position will soon be made permanent.

McDonald is a highly rated and modern coach, crucially respected and liked by the players. It was he who made the step up to a more prominent role after Langer was unceremoniously told to chill out last year.

Trevor Bayliss's candidacy is held up by some as proof of a mass New South Wales conspiracy within Australian cricket, proof again of how fractured the game is along state and generational lines.

Jason Gillespie is one of the foremost thinkers in the game today, arguably bettered only by Ponting. The former will likely be in the conversation, the latter seeming perfectly happy as far away from CA's inner workings as possible.

As for Langer, this is a wound that will take some time to heal. Australian cricket, to which he has been fiercely loyal for three decades, has now left him behind.

That Langer may never find another job to which he feels so intensely passionate may be a good thing, and may allow him to adapt along with the modern game without the baggy green slipping down in front of his eyes.

In the end, the worst you can say of Langer is that he was true to himself to a fault. He achieved great things as coach of the Australian cricket team, and he leaves the game in a far better place than when he found it.

He's taken the blows and gotten back up smiling before. For Langer's sake, let's hope that's how we think of him still.