wolmeister
Club Legend
- Nov 7, 2013
- 1,309
- 776
- AFL Club
- West Coast
Think Langer is getting a bit of a rough deal here. Maybe you know better than I though. I know little about the man other than what he did with bat in hand years ago. He's what, 6 tests into his national coaching career? In that time he's picked Mitch Marsh 3 times, or to look at it another way, only 50% of the time he was available. Some other beggars picked him for those other 28 or so Tests.
For me he's a bit like Stewie Dew. He's come into a shitshow with talent problems and off field problems (psychological and administrative). Maybe he's a good coach and maybe he isn't. I can't tell yet.
And as The Speaker says above speculation has been part of Australian Test Selection for a long time. Whether it be the next Warne, the next Hayden, the next Gilchrist, a Flintoff, etc. And selection at its core is subjective. There are always selections people strongly disagree with for whatever reason. And when this subjectivity is accompanied by poor performance it adds fuel to the fire. But even back in the glory days you didn't have to look too far to find a bore declaring at length how Love was a better pure batsman than half the current Test top 6, or that MacGill was a better bowler than Warne or that if Jones was gifted the same number of chances as Steve Waugh he'd be Australia's best batsman. All subjective, and as time transpires, irrelevant.
Spending a lot of time in these forums there seems to be a general consensus that we should "just pick the best side", yet there is no similar consensus about what that best side actually is. Plenty of suggestions, followed by plenty of "Ugh, no"'s. What defines "best"? Statistics, form, technique, potential, experience, incumbency, balance and psychology all play a part. We all weight those differently and don't have all the data anyway.
And similarly to Mitch Marsh, Langer applied for a job and was offered it. You can't blame him for accepting it or not insisting that CA perform a more rigorous appointment process. I'm massively frustrated by the ability of our batsman to make a dumb decision at seemingly a moments notice, but maybe this ship is going to take longer than 6 tests to turn around. In business where you've had an immature or poorly controlled s**t show, it often gets worse before it gets better. That might be the case here too. My accusatory gaze is more drawn to a distrust of the administrative governance rather than the new coach, probably due to my business and sports administration experience. I've found that when you have a paucity of transparency or confusion based upon implied instruction, it's because someone at the top likes things exactly that way.
Aussie cricket is in a hole for sure. Might be there for a while too. But I don't yet know which character Langer is.
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Needs to be given a chance to prove himself; 6 tests is hardly that.