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Justin Langer quits as Australian men’s cricket coach on Saturday

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Justin Langer quits as Australian men’s cricket coach on Saturday

Faced with months of reported complaints by senior players over his rigid coaching style and an apparently uncompromising Cricket Australia board of directors, Justin Langer resigned as coach of the Australian men’s cricket team on Saturday.

The announcement was made in a statement from Langer’s management company DSEG while Langer was flying from Melbourne to his hometown of Perth.

“DSEG confirms that our client Justin Langer has this morning tendered his resignation as coach of the Australian men’s cricket team, the statement said.

“The resignation follows a meeting with Cricket Australia last evening. The resignation is effective immediately.”

After weeks of scrutiny about whether he would have his four-year contract extended beyond June, the Cricket Australia board met on Friday to discuss the 51-year-old West Australian’s future.

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Cricket Australia said in a statement that Langer was offered a short-term extension to his current contract, which sadly he has opted not to accept.

It also said assistant coach Andrew McDonald had been appointed interim head coach.

Former Australia captain Ricky Ponting, who is close friends with Langer they share the same agent told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio that he believes Langer was pushed out of the job and it’s a really sad day as far as Australian cricket is concerned,” adding that the situation was embarrassing.”

Reports in Australian media over the past several months said Langer’s intense coaching style had led to complaints from Australia’s senior players to CA executives. Captain Pat Cummins had failed to endorse Langer during a radio interview on Friday, saying it was important to evaluate Langer’s position.

The team had enjoyed a strong run of play with an unexpected victory in the Twenty20 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates in November followed by a comprehensive 4-0 Ashes win at home. Cricket Australia said Langer’s contract extension offer, if accepted, would have seen him remain in charge to help Australia defend its T20 title in Australia at the end of the year.

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Ponting said he was disappointed Cummins had not publicly backed Langer, but said he understood the captain was caught in the middle.

Ponting also said it was a a very small group of players and other support staff that had become upset with Langer’s tough coaching style.

“That’s been enough to force a man that has put his life and heart and soul into Australian cricket, Ponting said. And (someone who has) done a sensational job of turning around the culture and the way the Australian cricket team has been looked at over the past three or four years.”

The Australian test team hit a low in March 2018 during the third test against South Africa in Cape Town. Australia batter Cameron Bancroft was caught by television cameras trying to rough up one side of the ball with sandpaper. Captain Steve Smith and vice-captain David Warner were found to be involved and all three received sanctions from Cricket Australia.

Although he was found not to have been directly involved, Australia coach Darren Lehmann said he would step down from his role, and he was replaced by Langer.

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McDonald and Michael Di Venuto, former England coach Trevor Bayliss and Ponting have been mentioned as potential replacements for Langer, although Ponting’s critical comments of Cricket Australia on Saturday may remove him as one of the coaching candidates.

England coach Chris Silverwood stepped down from his role in the wake of its heavy Ashes loss, following managing director Ashley Giles out. Graham Thorpe left as assistant coach on Friday.

Former captain Andrew Strauss, who led a review into the defeat, will appoint a caretaker coach to oversee England’s test series in the West Indies next month.

Strauss and Langer played county cricket together at Middlesex and have maintained a friendship since retiring which has led to suggestions that Langer may be in line for the vacant fulltime England coaching job.

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Former England captain Michael Vaughan wrote in a column for the London Telegraph on Friday that Langer could deliver a reality check to England with some tough love if given the job.

A left-handed batter, Langer is best known for his partnership with Matthew Hayden as Australia’s test opening batsmen during the early and mid-2000s. Langer played his last test against England in January 2007 having scored 7,696 runs in 105 tests with 23 centuries and 30 half-centuries.

Complete News Source : Business Standard

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Cricket

KL Rahul dangerously close to Laxman territory; to be perished for Sarfaraz Khan and Shubman Gill

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KL Rahul dangerously close to Laxman territory; to be perished for Sarfaraz Khan and Shubman Gill

To accommodate both Sarfaraz and Gill and stick with their five-bowler formula, a batter from the Bengaluru Test must make way. Ergo Rahul and the predicted axe

VVS Laxman went through the first half of his illustrious 15-and-a-half-year international career with the proverbial axe hanging over him. Despite his magical stroke-play and a well-founded reputation for rallying the lower order to bat above itself, he was forever the first name that sprang to the decision-makers’ minds when they had to drop someone to accommodate someone else. It wasn’t until the second half of his stint with the national team that he had ‘job security’, which automatically manifested itself in an array of glorious, match-turning knocks and earmarked him as one for a crisis.

KL Rahul is now dangerously close to approaching the Laxman territory, though at least in this instance, a case can be made out, perhaps, for why he often seems to be playing for his place. Almost a decade after his Test debut in Australia in December 2014, he has yet to nail down a permanent spot, a result of glaring inconsistency and repeated dalliances with injuries that have left him with a modest average of 33.87 from 53 Test appearances.

Unlike Laxman, who was thrust to the opener’s position for three years from 1997, successive team managements have worked overtime to create space for Rahul. He started off in the middle order in Melbourne against Australia, opened in the next Test in Sydney when he made a sparkling century, continued in that position for a good nine years – around the large pockets when either injuries or lack of form relegated him to the sidelines – and now seems to have found his calling in the middle order, where he was tried out in an almost last throw of the dice in South Africa last December.

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In his limited time at the No. 6 position, Rahul has been a revelation. On a spiteful surface in Centurion in his first innings back in the middle order, the classy right-hander made a marvellous 101 – Virat Kohli’s 38 was the next highest score – in India’s 245 all out. Two Tests later, against England in Hyderabad, he waltzed to 86 of the best until a hamstring strain kept him out of the last four Tests.

On his comeback last month against Bangladesh, Rahul showed why he is rated so highly, and therefore why he so frustrates when he chooses to shackle himself mentally, with uninhibited shot-making when India were pressing for a declaration (Chennai) and looking to make up for lost time with a frenetic batting approach (Kanpur) in the two Tests. Kanpur was especially mesmeric, 68 flowing off his bat in a mere 43 deliveries. It was the best of Rahul.

Axe hangs over Rahul’s head for India vs New Zealand 2nd Test

And yet here we are, two innings later, wondering whether he will, or should, feature in the playing XI in Pune, where India take on New Zealand in a must-win second Test from Thursday.

Shubman Gill, him of three centuries in his last six Tests, missed the Bengaluru defeat to the Kiwis with a stiff neck. Replacement batter Sarfaraz Khan made the most of own good fortune with a delectable 150, which makes it near impossible to drop him now that Gill is fully fit. To accommodate both Sarfaraz and Gill and stick with their five-bowler formula which has worked beautifully in the last few years, a batter from the Bengaluru Test must make way. Ergo Rahul and the predicted axe.

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One of the few men to have led India in all three formats internationally, Rahul didn’t help his cause with scores of 0 and 12 at his home ground, the M Chinnaswamy Stadium. In the first innings, he was strangled down leg-side by William O’Rourke while in the second, he received a peach from the same paceman operating with the second new ball and was again caught behind. Rahul was one of 11 failures in India’s first-innings 46 and one of seven wickets to fall in 93 deliveries to the second new cherry, but failures past and the logjam created by Gill’s availability have combined to identify him as the most susceptible to the axe.

It’s a cross impossible to bear, but also impossible to ignore just because it is so heavy, so overarching. Rahul is beyond gifted and makes batting appear oh-so-simple, but his struggles to embrace sustained run-making can’t be wished away. He is the eternal team man, much like his celebrated namesake also from Karnataka – both kept wickets admirably in 50-over World Cups 21 years apart, both made attractive and impactful runs during the tournament and both tasted bitter defeat at the hands of Australia in the final – but ‘eternal team man’ can sometimes be an euphemism for the ‘most dispensable’ and Rahul can be excused for thinking that those two lines have blurred beyond repair. Of course, if he is brutally honest to himself, he will acknowledge at least to himself that he too must bear culpability for the blurring of the lines.

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