Australian great Ian Chappell has called the past players who supported Justin Langer his “PR machine”. Instead, Chappell threw his weight behind skipper Pat Cummins, who had been given flak for not supporting the former coach in the lead up to his dismissal. Former cricketers such as Ricky Ponting, Matthew Hayden, Mitchell Johnson, Adam Gilchrist and Shane Warne have criticized Cricket Australia and the members of the national team, most notably Cummins, for not publicly supporting Langer, who was offered a short-term extension, which he turned down.
“It’s easy to criticize Cricket Australia because they aren’t very good, and it was expected, their reaction,” Chappell told the Wide World of Sports this week.
“What annoys me are two things; the fact that Pat Cummins, who’s probably been as honest as you can be about this sort of thing, that he’s done a bit of a patching job…and the Justin Langer PR machine on the work has been, and in many cases has been believed.”
Cummins was one of the players who had expressed concerns about Langer’s coaching style last year.
Chappell said Cummins should have a say in determining Australia’s next coach.
“And reasonably I think the captain should get the coach who he gets along with and works well with,” he said.
Langer had led Australia to T20 World Cup victory and Ashes series victory. He resigned last Saturday.
Former New Zealand captain Brendon McCullum praised Langer for the T20 World Cup title but was critical of his overseas test record as Australia’s coach.
“England is hopeless so I think anyone who was at the helm of the Ashes would have won that,” he told SENZ Breakfast.
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“The T20 World Cup was a really good performance, but other than that the performance was just a bit mediocre for an Australian cricket team. He didn’t win a Test series outdoors, which is actually quite average for an Australian team, and he wasn’t overwhelmingly successful.
“Yeah, he did a good job when he was there, but I can kind of understand why they wanted to go in a different direction.” Under Langer, Australia lost 1-0 to Pakistan in the UAE and achieved a 2-2 draw at the Ashes 2019.
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