Field Marshal

With Australian cricket at its lowest ebb in the wake of the ball-tampering scandal, the coming season shapes as one of the most testing in the sport’s history. MH sat down with new coach Justin Langer to discuss how you lead a team that’s gone from heroes to zeroes

- Ben Jhoty

Justin Langer is sitting barefoot in front of the white picket fence that rings the Allan Border Field in Brisbane when a group of Australian fast bowlers saunters past. The pacemen, who include Peter Siddle and Mitchell Starc, begin ribbing their coach about his lack of footwear. “Shoes off again,” yells Siddle. Langer smiles. “The way it should be,” he yells back, before getting up off the grass and scampering over to the players, who continue to take the mickey. “Looking good, mate,” says Siddle, placing his hand on Langer’s shoulder as if to assess his muscle tone. “Didn’t you use to like mesh singlets?” someone else chimes in.

As the players continue across the oval to the nets, Langer hurries back to his position against the fence. “Great bloke,” he says of Siddle as he resumes his position on the grass. “He’s a ripper.”

It’s an innocuous enough exchange. Banter, Langer calls it later when discussing the way his team will play its cricket under his leadership. Over the course of our interview he has similar interactions with a handful of other current and former players, who greet him with a mix of respect, esteem and affection.

It’s not hard to see why. Famously intense, disciplined to a fault yet endearingly enigmatic, Langer, or “JL”, was a player who, through sheer hard work and relentless determination, managed to wring every last drop of his potential to get the best out of himself. The question now, as he takes on perhaps the most difficult job in Australian sport, is can he get the best out of others?