Australia’s head coach is under scrutiny as his players are concerned with the coaching methods that former opening batsman has operated with during his tenure, says a report in The Sydney Morning Herald.
According to the report, the players aren’t pleased with the lack of freedom and restricted environment within the dressing room under David Langer and team manager Gavin Dobey.
In an end-of-season review of the team, players and support staff reportedly raised their concerns around Langer’s style of operation, opening up on how they are finding it difficult to cope up with his intensity and mico-management of things.
Similar reports had did the rounds in the aftermath of Australia’s bitter 2-1 Test series loss at home to a weakened Indian side earlier in the year. As Australia suffered their most embarrassing series result in recent memory, there were claims that the players aren’t finding it too comfortable to adapt to Langer’s way of working.
“This (the end-of-season review) is effectively identical to the process undertaken before the last World Cup and the 2019 Ashes where the team performed strongly,”
SMH quoted Cricket Australia’s (CA) national teams boss Ben Oliver as saying.
“It’s part of our ongoing commitment to on- and off-field improvement and we expect it will have a similar benefit in the team’s preparation for the upcoming T20 World Cup and home Ashes,”
he added.
Headed by Tim Ford, the national team’s leadership consultant, there was another review meeting held with the aim to try and gauge players’ perspective. Ford took players’ inputs through virtual interviews, seeking their view on the changes they want to see implemented going forward.
As a follow-up, the report will now be presented to the leadership group, featuring Test captain Tim Paine, white-ball skipper Aaron Finch and their all-format deputy Pat Cummins.
It’ll allow them to take the team forward with their own guiding principles, not one enforced by Langer since coming on board after the controversial Cape Town ball-tampering incident in 2018.
On its part, CA has now claimed that comments recorded anonymously on Langer in Ford’s process were not as hard on him as the player review suggested. The head coach will, of course, be informed about the findings.
Langer’s four-year contract as a coach is due to end in 2022, with his renewal at the helm of affairs dependent largely on how he responds to these reports and reviews.
