It should have been a pleasant afternoon’s cricket for the Perthshire second XI who travelled to Aberdeen in the summer of 1991.
On the journey up to Mannofield in the Granite City, the North Inch players told their introspective young Australian signing that he could look forward to batting on one of the best pitches in the whole country.
But then, when the action started and Justin Langer was dismissed first ball, it sparked a response which testified to his competitive edge. He was furious with himself and his mood didn’t improve as the tussle progressed.
At the climax, there was no hanging around or acceptance that the fixture wasn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Even at 20, the future Australian opener, Ashes winner and serial run accumulator for his country, had adopted the attitude that genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains and he was back in the nets practising as if his life depended on it.
Although that stakhanovite philosophy didn’t always make him the most popular figure in the dressing rooms he frequented, Langer’s burning desire to set himself and his colleagues exalted standards soon earned him the reputation of being one of the most intense individuals in the game.
But now, it has also established him as the coach of the team which surged to victory in the ICC T20 World Cup with a remarkable revival after it seemed they were on the brink of elimination earlier in the tournament.
There has been no secret to his success which boils down to work, work and more work, on and off the field. He may not have been the most naturally gifted individual ever to wear the baggy green cap, but the stats don’t lie.
He was an Aussie run machine
And they tell us that he played in no less than 105 Tests and scored 7,696 runs at an average of more than 45, the majority of them as part of the most formidable and all-conquering Australian line-ups of the modern era.
It’s only a coincidence, but a rather remarkable one, that another of his compatriots, Adam Gilchrist, also turned out at Perthshire in the early 1990s at a time when many Australians swapped their homeland for the Highlands.
The days have gone when such leading luminaries as the Aussie duo would book in for a season or two in Scotland – not when there are lucrative IPL and other T20 contracts on offer throughout the globe – but Langer spent enough time in Britain to grow accustomed to cricket’s peaks and troughs.
At the outset of his Test career, he struggled to make a name for himself and was dropped by the selectors. Yet he battled away, refining and perfecting his technique behind the scenes and, when he returned to the international stage, he and Matthew Hayden became the most formidable opening partnership since the days of Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes.
He’s not a chatty conversationalist, nor a flannel merchant, but somebody who is skilled in martial arts and is prepared to put his body through the wringer. This manifested itself in his 100th Test when he was struck by a bouncer from South Africa’s Makhaya Ntini and suffered concussion.
It was a horrible incident, but despite the risk of being killed if he was hit on the head again, Langer padded up to bat in the second innings. His captain Ricky Ponting subsequently wrote in his diary that because of his confrere’s intention of defying medical advice and returning to the crease, he would have had to declare the run chase and forfeit the match.
Thankfully, that scenario never materialised, but it demonstrates the abilities which Langer brought to his team as a player and now the coach.
He inherited the role in difficult circumstances, following the notorious ball-tampering saga, involving Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft in 2018 and, while he has suffered setbacks on the journey, including defeat to India last winter, Sunday’s masterly demolition of New Zealand proved how he has transformed his side’s fortunes in the short form of the game.
His sights will now be set on the Ashes series which commences on December 8 in Brisbane. And while it promises to be another rip-snorting contest between these traditional combatants, Langer’s men will have the edge with the return to form of key players such as Warner and Mitchell Marsh and the obvious class of Josh Hazlewood and Adam Zampa, whose heroics helped secure the global T20 prize for the first time in Aussie history.
He said: ‘Let’s all go home’
Not bad for Langer, the idiosyncratic fellow who sulked and snarled on his brooding trudge back to the pavilion at Mannofield 30 years ago, but who has gone onwards and upwards in the intervening period.
As one of the Scots who was there recalled: “He didn’t speak to anyone all day and as soon as the match was over, told us: ‘Right, let’s go home.'”
That day brought an ugly duck. But the story has had a happy ending.
