Former Australian Test captain Tim Paine has hit out at Cricket Australia’s (CA) handling of Justin Langer’s exit, labelling it as “embarrassing and unprofessional”.
Writing in his new autobiography, The Price Paid, Paine offered a telling insight into the ugly coaching saga which ended with Langer resigning after being offered a six-month extension.
A frank Paine admitted to being stunned when he heard the news of Langer’s short-term extension, believing his former coach was going to earn a two-year deal instead.
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“The news came that they’d offered him a six-month contract. What the f**k?” Paine wrote.
“To add to the insult, it had been dragged out. Time was wasted. I’ll never back down from my opinion that it was poorly handled, embarrassing and unprofessional.
“I think they knew he wouldn’t accept it and then they wouldn’t have to sack him. It was the easy way out. It was upsetting to see a man who cared so much treated like that. It hurt him deeply.
“The bottom line in all of this is, whether he was kept on or not, he should have been treated better.”
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Even Paine himself admitted that some players did have a problem with Langer’s intense coaching approach, although he added that he did not necessarily agree.
“After the series JL asked me about why things were getting into the media,” Paine wrote.
“I told him that, yes, there were issues and I could see the problem, even though my thoughts on it didn’t align with some of the other players. It was no secret what the problems were — basically, it was just about his intensity, the boys wanted him to chill out a little bit, be less controlling. JL said, ‘That’s how I am,’ and I replied, ‘I know, but it’s a bit much.’
“After I spoke to the players I rang JL and said that they were on board, but looking back I don’t think they all were.
“Then there was an interview where JL said something about being himself and not changing, which didn’t help things.”
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After criticism of his coaching style and a heated confrontation with a CA staffer after a first-ever series defeat to Bangladesh in October last year, Langer took to LinkedIn to post a lengthy cryptic message.
In it, Langer posted a section from Najwa Zebian’s book ‘Mind Platter’, seemingly aimed at his critics and suggesting he would not change his approach.
Paine went on to reveal that CA chair Earl Eddings and chief executive Nick Hockley asked him to call Langer to tell him “the unvarnished truth”.
Paine wrote that he had never gave “such frank and detailed criticism” to anyone but added that Langer took the feedback better than he had expected.
“The next phone call was the hard one,” Paine wrote.
“I lay awake that night sweating about it. I made notes about exactly what I had to say to JL.
“Then I made the call and laid it all on the table, in forensic detail, everything I had heard, what the boys were saying.
“It was pretty confronting for him, I could hear that in his voice, and I braced myself for his comeback. Nine times out of ten in that situation, you’d expect the other person to be angry. “But JL’s reaction was to tell me, ‘No one has ever spoken to me like this, nobody has ever been this honest,’ and I remember him saying that it was like I’d given him a gift. The way he took it spoke volumes for the man.”
