Hayden, Johnson slam players, Cricket Australia Langer resigns as head coach

The crying Matthew Hayden has blamed national players for not publicly supporting Justin Langer when he resigned as head coach of Australia.

Langer, led by Australia to win the T20 World Championship and the Ashes Series 4-0, resigned on Saturday as players complained about his coaching style for months.

“If he expected Australia’s current cricket team to show care, I dare say they won’t, and that’s a real sadness for me around this,” the emotional Hayden said. ABC Sport.

Pat Cummins, who was handed over as captain after Tim Painen’s undeserved departure, did not support Langer as a coach and had insisted that checking his suitability for the position was fair in a “high-performance environment.”

Hayden criticized Cummins, one of the players who had expressed concern about Langer’s coaching style last year, and also described the entire appraisal process as unhealthy.

“This wasn’t a healthy process,” said the 50-year-old, who had formed an awesome opening pair with Langer during his game days.

“This was the dude (Langer) who beat Ashes, staying basically back in Melbourne all this time for a month. The whole thing just smells like orchestrated basically from the moment all this rubbish started coming out in the middle of last year.

“You can see that the writing was on the wall. If I had then bet that Justin Langer would have retained his place at the end of his contract, I would have put my entire life savings into not doing it.” On Friday, Langer held a long meeting with the board, which offered him a short extension, but he decided to reject the offer.

Hayden took a strong stance on Cricket Australia and said it, along with the players, should be blamed for the way in which reports of dissatisfaction with Langer’s coaching became public.

“It’s such a leaking boat, this so-called high-performance culture in cricket. There is no more internal refuge,” he said.

Langer got the reins of Australian cricket after the infamous ball tamper scandal in 2018. But Hayden said CA did not show respect for how Langer led the team in the aftermath of the scandal.

Langer welcomed Steve Smith and David Warner back into the team after the 2019 ban ended.

“Where would Davey Warner be right now if Justin Langer wasn’t the coach? Where would Steve Smith be? Remember when they came back a year after the ban… JL spent forever around these two guys.” “We, the Australian cricket community, loved Justin because he came in and said,‘ No way, we’re going to play this game in a way that makes Australians proud again, ’” he said.

Since Langer’s departure, assistant coach Andrew McDonald has been appointed as interim coach.

In addition to McDonald’s, Trevor Bayliss, Jason Gillespie, Ricky Ponting, Greg Shipperd and Michael Di Venuto are other leading candidates to replace Langer as Australia’s head coach.

Former Australian pacifier Mitchell Johnson was also embarrassed to hear about Langer’s resignation.

“You have to look at some facts and the facts are that JL has done a very good job. He got the team out of a very dark place,” he said.

“I just feel like he’s been forced into this. I’m not blaming him.

“I think the mess that has taken place throughout this breach of contract has been disgusting and I feel like it has just gotten into his hands, and I think it’s a bit of a symbolic gesture from Cricket Australia.”