Former Australia skipper Ricky Ponting has described Justin Langer’s stepping down as the head coach as “a sad day for Australian cricket” and called the Australian cricket board handling of it “embarrassing”.
Langer’s resignation was announced by his management company, DSEG, on Saturday morning following a meeting with the Australian Cricket board on Friday night.
Pointing “It is a really sad day for Australian cricket and if you look back it has been a really poor six months in the way that the board has handled some of the best people in the Australian cricket – Tim Paine and Justin Langer and he thinks it’s been almost embarrassing the way they have handled those two cases,” Ponting said. (source ABC radio Melbourne)
Ponting, who was a coaching consultant under Justin for the Australian team in the 2019 World Cup edition, has longstanding relationships with several current players in the squad and had played with them when he was in the squad and has coached some of them in the IPL.
Langer’s resignation has opened the prospects for the Australian board to split the head coaching roles, something the former coach had warned was fine in theory but inappropriate. Ponting has the same viewpoint and believes that one head coach is the ideal solution.
The former head coach was very aggressive as a player which helped him achieve great feats in his playing days but became the source of his decline too. As reported by many media channels Langer was not happy when he talked about re-appointing him as the head coach in the meeting with Cricket Australia on Friday.
Justin Langer’s tenure as the Australian head coach was not so bad as he made sure he put the Aussies back in the top ranking of red-ball cricket registering a brilliant 4-0 Ashes series victory this year and winning the T20 world cup in 2021.
