Langer insists Aussies will not be backing down
New coach insists team will play in right spirit Ponting takes on ‘official support’ role for tour
Justin Langer will not tolerate his players abusing opponents, but says Australia will continue to sledge them, despite the scrutiny on their behaviour following the ball-tampering scandal.
Australia play their first game today against Sussex at Hove since the Test series in South Africa, in which the entire nation was rocked by the team’s cheating.
The fallout from that incident continued just hours before Langer and new captain, Tim Paine, spoke at Lord’s yesterday, when James Sutherland resigned as chief executive of Cricket Australia after 17 years. Sutherland insisted he had been planning to leave for several months but, since the ball-tampering incident erupted, the head has been cut off Australian cricket, with departures of the Test and one-day captain, head coach and now chief executive.
Just as Langer was about to speak, it was announced that Ricky Ponting would combine an official support role with his commentary duties on this brief tour to England as Australia turn to one of their greatest players to help Langer build a new team culture.
Langer, appointed head coach last month, expects his team to be the target of crowd abuse during the five one-day internationals and one Twenty20 against England over the next three weeks, but says his players will not inflame things by showing the ugly side of Australian cricket, an acceptance that they had gone too far in the past.
“There’s a difference between banter and abuse and abuse is no good,” said Langer. “There’s no room for it on the field but there’s plenty of room for banter or what we call sledging because it’s a fun part of the game.”
Langer was on a charm offensive, looking relaxed and cracking jokes, telling one newspaper reporter he had a great voice for radio, describing Lord’s as “the best place on earth” and revealing he sledges his mother while playing golf and one of his daughters while playing the card game Uno.
“In Australia sledging is a good thing: if I play Uno with my daughter we sledge each other. If I play golf with my parents, we sledge each other. There’s a difference between banter and abuse. Even if we were nice, people would still think we’re rough-edged Australians.
“That’s how it’s going to be mate. We’ll go about our business really well, we’ll behave well on and off the field and then you guys will still call us sledging Australians! It’s been happening for the last 30 years. We’ll work with that.”
Langer and Ponting were the beating heart of the great Australia team of the 2000s, who were respected but not liked by opponents, because of their use of what Steve Waugh described as “mental disintegration”, or sledging. Now Langer has drawn up a code of conduct for his players knowing they are under scrutiny as never before.
“We’ve got to create the environment where we have a great changing room where the expectations are high,” he said. “All culture is behaviour so we have to make sure that’s good, on and off the field. Then we’ll have the culture where all our young bloods can be as good a person and player as they can be.”
Sitting alongside Langer was Paine, who has had a meteoric rise since his surprise recall for the Ashes series in November, replacing Steve Smith as Test captain in South Africa and appointed in charge of the one-day side for this trip only. He looks set to lead Australia in next summer’s Ashes, but is unsure of his place in the one-day team.
For now, without Smith and David Warner, this is a chance for Paine to rebuild the team in his own image – a respectful, hard-working Australian cricketer. “We’re not going to be silent on the field. We’ll be speaking and trying to put pressure on opposition teams as we usually do, but there’s got to be a respectful element to it,” he said.
“There’s no doubt our reputation took a bit of a battering. Just getting back into cricket is an opportunity for us to move on and show we’ve made a few changes.”
Australia have batting firepower to make up for the loss of Smith and Warner, in Glenn Maxwell, Finch, D’arcy Short and Travis Head.
But the bowling has been hit by injury, with Josh Hazlewood joining Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins in missing the tour. It leaves Kane Richardson leading the attack, along with young fast bowlers Billy Stanlake and Jhye Richardson. Nathan Lyon, who goaded England in public more than any other player during the Ashes, will no doubt add an edge to an inexperienced team.
England, ranked No 1 in the world, have a settled team, although injuries to Ben Stokes and Chris Woakes weaken Eoin Morgan’s attack ahead of the series, which starts at the Oval next Wednesday.