Hello and welcome to Stumped, your intercontinental hit of news, features, and debate
from the quirky world of cricket. I'm Alison Mitchell in Adelaide. Back in the city after a bit
of a visit to the limestone coast, which is the south-eastern region of South Australia. So, some
amazing beaches and then a short drive inland to the Coonawarra, which is a fantastic wine region,
a strip of red soil - terra rossa soil - atop limestone, which means wonderful vines and even
more wonderful wines are produced there, but a lot happened in the cricket world while I was away.
I kept finding oddments of signal to see that England's women had managed to not win a single
game in the Ashes. Australia's women absolutely won that series outright, and all manner
of news which we'll be discussing in the show also surrounding England and Australia's men's teams.
Hi, it's Jim Maxwell in Sydney and I'm looking out the window and I can see a rainbow. But at the
end of the rainbow, I'm sorry, Ali. I see Meg Lanning, Elise Perry, Alyssa Healy.
It's all gold. Gold, gold, gold, everywhere. It's been the golden summer for Australian cricket.
And what's going to happen next? Pakistan's coming up. Sheffield Shield's starting. Oh,
I did a bit of T20 against Sri Lanka. So, life goes on very happily. One part of the world is certainly
going to believe that blue comes before gold, Jim. This is Charu Sharma for All India Radio
returning from the coffee estate in Coorg where, of course, there's a lot of picking
going on. It's picking season, but I couldn't reach Bangalore in time, so I stopped halfway,
which is in the Royal city of Mysore. Got myself a hotel room, pulled the curtains together,
and here we go. It seems like all is forgiven and forgotten for Indian cricket. Were they really in
South Africa a short while back? Well anyway, the under-19 team has won the World Cup for the fifth
time in a row, so it's obviously a robust system in India. And at home, as always, the Indian team
can't seem to do any wrong, particularly against the hapless West Indies.
Yeah, big congratulations to the India under-19's. That does bode well for the future doesn't it, with that strength in depth
and youngsters coming through. We are going to start this week, though, on the show by talking
about the aftermath of the shock resignation of Australian men's head coach, Justin Langer.
Just to remind everybody, you remember that Langer was brought in at a time of real crisis for the
Australian men's team; it was after the Sandpaper Gate scandal in 2018. Well, now he's left his role
after a season in which Australia have won both the T20 World Cup and the Ashes.
Now, his contract was not yet up, but discussions were due on its renewal or otherwise, and his future
had been the subject of a lot of speculation. It was believed Langer wanted to continue, so why
did he leave? In his resignation letter to Cricket Australia's chief executive Nick Hockley, he said:
"Last night I was offered a short-term contract until the end of the T20 World Cup in Australia,
with the sentiment of 'going out on a high'." After careful consideration, he says: "I have
decided not to accept this contract renewal." He goes on to say: "If media reports are correct,
several senior players and a couple of support staff don't support me moving forward, and it is
now apparent the CA board, and you, Nick, are also keen to see the team move in another direction."
He says: "My life has been built on values of honesty, respect, trust, truth, and performance
and if that comes across as 'too intense' at times, I apologise." So that was part of Langer's
resignation letter which was published in the Australian media, so it's quite a bit to unpack
there isn't there. Langer only offered a six-month contract extension. The reports of the discord
between players and coach and an apology from Langer for his apparent intensity. New captain,
Pat Cummins, then eventually spoke and clarified his own position, including feedback that he and
other senior players gave to the board. Jim, how first of all did the simple matter of a coach's
contract become such a convoluted and emotive affair as well? What did you make of Cricket
Australia offering just a six-month deal to Justin Langer? Well, it was a bit of a flaky cake in the
wind. If they'd been brutal, as many organisations are when they've made their mind up to go in
another direction. They should have just said: "Thanks, Justin. Terrific, but we're moving on."
But Pat Cummins is obviously the man in charge. A very, as you suggested, a clear thinker. He has
a lot of intelligence and emotional intelligence. In fact, he's got more emotional intelligence
than some of the former players who've been going on with a lot of claptrap
about what should be going on with the treatment of Langer. We all know, in life, in politics,
in business and in sport, sometimes associations come to an end and it can be quite brutal.
How do you handle it comfortably? It's not very easy. So, I'd think Cummins has handled himself extremely
well. So, has Langer. He's gone out with a bit of respect. So, changing the wind, but Pat Cummins,
as has always been the case in Australian Cricket, is the man in charge. It's the captain in charge. Not the coach.
What happened to the good old fashioned concept of communication? You talk
to the man who has been leading Australia as their head coach for the last four years, with obvious
success. Surely, he can't be saying: "I've read in the media and some people are saying this. And
what's going on here?" I mean the cricket board, the chief, the selectors or whoever needs to sit
with Langer and have a long conversation. Say: "You've done for four years. I hope you enjoyed it
and the team's done really well." And what makes sense, therefore, is to talk to them about whether you'd
like to continue for another one, two, four years. What's your priority? Because we obviously are
fond of you. You've done well. But whose opinion do you really take? Who are the selectors of the
head coach? Is it the team? Is it the captain? Is it some other people? So, this is a jumble that
hasn't worked very well for Langar at all. He has to admit that it's their right to hire and fire,
but to get somebody with obvious success for only a six-month extension? That's rude, because what
are you trying to prove? If it was somebody who's was interning for the job and you can say: "We'll
give it to you for six months and we see. You've done a really good job four months and now we'll
see what you can do in the next six months." It doesn't work. Let's bring in our guest. Someone
who will have a lot of insights on player/coach, captain/coach dynamics, even, and what it takes to
be a successful coach of an international team. The former Australia men's coach, John Buchanan
is with us, John, of course, had a lot of success with the national side, coaching
Australia to two World Cups, multiple Ashes wins and that run of sixteen consecutive
Test match victories. John, welcome to Stumped. You coached Justin Langer. You've been critical
of Cricket Australia's treatment of him. What did you make of what Pat Cummins has had to say since?
Firstly, I'll suppose, as you said, underpin this one because I'm a fan of Justin,
having been associated with him as a player and then as a friend and the person himself.
I haven't seen his so called coaching style, but I could understand that he is a person who demands
excellence of himself and therefore the people around him. If he or they don't live up to it,
he's going to come down hard on that. And I notice in some of Pat Cummins' comments,
some of the words that he chose. One was he said: "We've been very well schooled by Justin Langer,"
which to me gives a sense of well, there was the headmaster, and we were the pupils and that
was kind of the culture that operated. He said we now want a calmer, more collaborative coach.
Again, I'm not sure exactly what that will mean, because again, we understand what
coaching's about. That's where I think there's a bit of a gap in the system that I don't think
Cricket Australia, or you were just talking Charu about India, I don't think a lot of associations
really understand the role of the coach. Yes, no doubt the captain runs the show on the field,
but to get from field to field, from tournament to tournament, from year to year and try to sustain
success. That's not the captain's role. The captain's role is to captain a group of players
and himself and trying to perform from game to game. But the overall planning, the strategy, the
culture, the behaviours, all that sort of stuff really falls fairly and squarely on the coach.
So, Langer, who came in four years ago was given that task to change the culture, get the Australian
team to be a bit more likeable, and win some games. He's ticked those boxes, so at the moment people
I don't really understand what that role is. And, certainly, then when you add to that
other words like "we're in transition" and "we're evolving," again, That
is a bit of gobbledygook. It's a bit of a smokescreen stuff for me.
Now that Langer, who was supposedly given six-month transition period, well now that
he's not there, well what's transition? Who's running transition. What does that actually mean?
Remind us, you alluded to a little bit ago about what he was like as a player. What do you
believe his coaching legacy will be?
There's four years of turning a culture around, for a start, that was not great. However, you want to look at it, it was in disarray.
And you now have all the players coming out and saying we're a very united group, so that to me is one thing
that's occurred in that four year period, if nothing else. The other thing is I think they've
all, to a person, said to Nick Hockley, what a wonderful job he's done. He's just been
the right person to come in and turn the ship around. So, the professionalism, the excellence,
the work ethics, all those sort of things will be always residual marks wherever Justin's been.
Whether it was as a player or now as a coach. So, there is a fantastic foundation on which to build
which unfortunately Justin doesn't get to do. But whoever comes in next has a wonderful platform on
which to launch their coaching career, I would've thought. In terms of Pat Cummins is this his first
real test, now, as the captain? It is a test. As Alison said, he speaks well, he's very erudite,
he does have the potential to be a person who has statesman-like attributes,
but nonetheless, he's still got to deliver on the field. That's his main job. He's got
to captain the side and that's his second job, if you like. First, if you want to stay in the team,
you've got to perform whether you're captain or not. And then you got actually lead the side
on the field. So, he's got some interesting tests coming up in terms of one day cricket and then
moving into Pakistan. Australia haven't been there for 25 years. You know, a very hard tour,
very hard for anybody to tour away these days anyway. It doesn't matter what the country. So,
they are going to go there on the back of no preparation, at least in terms of
four-day cricket and straight into a Test match series. So, that'll be a very interesting test
for him and how he works his way through that. But at the moment, points to him.
Andrew McDonald goes over as interim coach. I don't know whether anybody follows Ted Lasso,
but he might be one of the outside candidates to put his name forward for the job.
I'd be very interesting to find out your views on how the whole concept of being a head coach
of a national team, the country's team, may have evolved over the years?
You know, if you listen to Ian Chappell and possibly Shane Warne and a few others, there's one role for a coach and
something to do with driving. But the game has changed from Ian Chappell's day, and I listened
to Nick Hockley talk about when he's talking about transition and evolution, and how he was trying to
phrase what that meant. And it was very unclear what that meant. But one of the things that he
threw into the mix was: "We're going to and look at shared leadership. We've got George Bailey,
who's the chairman of selectors and we see him as acting as a bit of an assistant coach. Then we've
got a possible assistance with somebody who might be looking after long-form cricket and short-form
cricket, but we're not going to change structures and we will keep the same sort of
role as the head coach." He was very unclear, but one of the things that is very clear to me
in running or being involved in international cricket team, is that if there are too many
voices, it creates incredible difficulties in communication. From Cricket Australia's point of
view, one of the outcomes of this should be that if the high-performance centre has any ideas,
then one of those is really to work out how we actually progress our coaches. How we identify
them, how we travel them into their various career paths. Alison was watching Jim not so
much, but Alison was watching some of the women's cricket: Australia and England playing in their
Ashes series. Now Matthew Mott was another young player in our set up, but he's a young coach
who again was a good player, but has travelled the road of coaching in many ways. I think,
you know, when Australia's men's team talk about calm and collaborative,
Matthew Mott presents exactly that picture. Just to wrap up, there's also a vacancy with England,
of course, at the moment now that Chris Silverwood has gone. Knowing Justin Langer as you do, there's
obviously been a lot of conjecture. Could you see him being interested in coaching England, at all?
I could I mean, obviously, he's just a passionate Australian and just wears the baggy green on his
heart wherever he can. In 2001, just a very quick story. We sort of hadn't picked Langer through that
series. We'd gone with Matthew Slater and Matthew Haden - Slater got ill - and so we had to try and
find a replacement for him for the last Test match and we were playing down at Sussex, I think,
and all Justin has to do was go out and score twenty runs and he got out for a duck in the first over.
And he was just totally silent on the way back in the bus. So, I sat down with him that night and
two things he said: "You and Stephen have betrayed me. You know I'd run through a brick wall for you
guys at any opportunity," and he said: "When you had your opportunity to pick me in the side ahead of
either Slater or Haden, you didn't,: so that was one. But the other one, the telling one was he
said: "You ripped my heart out. You've absolutely ripped my heart out because my heart is about my
passion for Australia and my passion for playing cricket, a passion for wearing the baggy green cap
and I'll probably won't ever play again." Anyway, long story cut short, we cuddled and made up.
Didn't quite kiss, but cuddled and made up, I picked him in the next game,
and he made one hundred and his smile has never stopped. That said,
I don't think you'd be the right time for him to do it because I think he'll be just mentally and
physically worn down at the moment. And he needs breathing space. He needs to get away from it.
He needs to do a couple of other things, and then reassess whether coaching and international
cricket is the career that he wants to still pursue, or maybe there are other things in life
to do. Because I just think there'll be a lot of opportunities for him because of the person that
he is. But having said that he is a good friend of Andrew Strauss. I coached him in 1998 at Middlesex
and he is just a really well known around that part of the region. A great friend in Nigel Wray,
who's the Saracens owner and a good friend of Angus Fraser. So, there are a lot of
things that might be used to kind of tug him in that direction, but I think he'd
be a pretty good choice, there's no doubt about that. Whether he's ready to do it or not, I don't know.
Just to pin you down before we let you go, who do you think Cricket Australia would be well versed to look at?
I'll finish off on a controversial note. The New South Wales camp would like Trevor Bayliss. The
Victorian camp would like the Andrew McDonald, so it depends which power group wins.
John, it's been a real pleasure to speak to you and to hear your views. Thank you so much
for joining us on Stumped. Hey, my pleasure Alison, Charu and Jim. Good to see you!
Well, that is it for this week's Stumped. More news, features and debate next week. But for now, my
thanks to Jim Maxwell, Charu Sharma and of course you for listening. See you next time. Bye bye.