Ashes 2021-22: Justin Langer’s put-down of Jack Leach highlights Australian cricket’s conundrum

These handful of sentences were the standouts from a Justin Langer press conference shortly after he was appointed Australian men’s team coach in 2018. About to embark on a white-ball tour of England with a badly depleted squad, Langer was keen to set the ground rules early for his side, the face of a cricket nation only just out of intensive care following the car crash of Cape Town.

The idea was for Australia to get back to the top of the world rankings, but to do so in the right manner, treating both friends and foes respectfully. All great and admirable in theory.

Yet more than three and a half years on, Langer continues to find ticking all those boxes simultaneously a challenge, especially for a person as passionate as the former Test opener.

Langer is fiercely loyal. He’s a guy you want defending you and is there for you when the chips are down. As James Muirhead revealed last month, when he was looking for work after losing his state cricket contract, Langer was acting as his referee and taking those calls first thing in the English morning while on tour. A couple of weeks ago Langer left Australia’s pre-Ashes camp in Queensland to visit the besieged and broken Paine in Hobart. Paine, by Langer’s admission, had made a mistake but Langer would continue to stand by the former captain.

This is a commendable side to the coach. This is that mateship he spoke of back in 2018, that sticking together. The problem is he sometimes oversteps on the mateship, to the detriment of some of those other targets.

“I continually see in this job, and I see in this society we live in … it can be brutal. You learn your lessons, but we live in an unforgiving society and that’s a real shame,” he said during his first press conference since visiting Paine.

But is it really that unforgiving? Which big name sportspeople haven’t been given second chances? Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft all returned to the Australian Test XI at the first possible chance when their respective suspensions elapsed following the ball tampering affair. Smith has just returned to a leadership position, leaving him a heartbeat away from assuming the captaincy again. Is Langer really being No.1 for honesty, or is he bending the facts in the name of “elite mateship?”

Another example came on Friday morning, ahead of play on day three at the Gabba. Understandably buoyed by his side’s performance over the first couple of days in Brisbane, Langer was upbeat when interviewed by Channel 7 ahead of the resumption of play.

As expected, Langer was asked by Ricky Ponting whether Australia’s aggression towards Jack Leach on Thursday was premeditated. Langer effectively confirmed it had been a tactic, and hinted at how happy he had been with the way the task had been carried out by his batters. All fair enough. He noted that England like to play four seam bowlers and said that by taking it to left-arm spinner Leach, the tourists would be forced to think further about their selection. Again, all very reasonable.

It would have been a pretty ho-hum interview, but Langer strayed from the ‘V’. Without really being prompted, he sunk the boot into Leach and in turn prop up his own spinner, Nathan Lyon.

“One of the things we have a massive competitive advantage is we have a world class spinner,” Langer said.

“Jack Leach and Dom Bess, they‘re still quite young spinners. We want to put them under pressure.”

As far as mid-series jibes go, it was pretty loaded. There are a few issues with this. For one, it’s not really accurate to suggest Leach is “still quite young.” Bess, the off-spinner currently playing for England Lions, is only 24, but Leach is 30 and has 340 first-class wickets to his name. This is also his 17th Test since debuting in early 2018. Coming into this match he had 62 Test wickets at an average of less than 30. Yes, he was destroyed on day two, but that’s a pretty fair sample size. This isn’t some kid we are talking about.

Leaving that to one side, the whole thing was so oddly gratuitous. Leach had been whacked to all corners on Thursday, why did Langer feel the need to kick him further when he was down? Again this couldn’t be put down to a mere slip of the tongue either, because Langer wasn’t answering the question directly. He went out of his way to compare Leach (and Bess) to Lyon when he didn’t have to. It was not a comment reeking of humility.

So why did he do it? Only Langer will know, but the hint appears to come in the fact that he veered off course to allude to Lyon being world-class. At 34 and in his 101st Test, Lyon should not really need to be so crudely pumped up by his coach. But of course the backdrop to this match is that Lyon had a poor series against India last summer and as of Friday morning remained marooned on 399 Test wickets, at an average higher than that of Leach. While not quite to the extent he had targeted Mitchell Starc before the series, Shane Warne had also turned the microscope in Lyon’s direction. So Langer looked like he made sure to stand up for Lyon as he tried to eke out the most anticipated 400 in Australian sport since Cathy Freeman, a wait which kept stretching deep into England’s second dig. Just like with Paine, he was keen to be a good mate to a team stalwart. Elite mateship. But at the expense of humility.

Despite the fighting efforts of Joe Root and Dawid Malan on Friday afternoon, Australia remains in the box seat to go 1-0 up in this series. As shown by Leach’s performance on Thursday, or Rory Burns hiding at the non-striker’s end in England’s second innings – just the fourth time in 264 first-class innings where he has opened that he hasn’t faced the first ball – after Wednesday’s golden duck at the hands of Mitchell Starc, the Australians can gain a mental edge just by the way they play their cricket. This will be more than enough for the Australian public. They just won the T20 World Cup without acting like dickheads. There is no need to rub noses into the dirt unnecessarily – there are enough talking heads in the media who will do that without being asked – even in the supposed name of mateship.