Adam Gilchrist has suggested that Justin Langer could be a “good fit” in the England cricketing set-up after resigning from his post as Australia head coach last month.
Under Langer’s tenure, Australia won their maiden T20 World Cup title last year, before going on to win the Ashes 4-0. The former opener, who took over the role following the ball-tampering scandal in 2018, last month declined a short-term six-month contract extension as the Australia coach after pinning his hopes on a long-term deal and sent in his resignation effective immediately.
With the England team on the lookout for a new head coach following Chris Silverwood’s sacking, many have suggested Langer to be the side’s next man-in-charge, which Gilchrist said could be an interesting challenge for him.
Speaking on The Shackles Are Offpodcast, the former wicketkeeper said, “I don’t say this in a sort of provocative sense to anyone, but I do look at the setup at the moment with England, and gee, he’d be a good fit if the dust had settled and he got himself, not in an emotional ‘up against Australia’, but if he went, ‘that is a challenge there, look at that…’
“It’d be awesome to see Justin Langer working with Ben Stokes. I mean, the work ethic from Stokes is on par with Justin Langer’s work ethic, and that would be intriguing to see what could grow and develop and sprout from that, and Joe as captain, I think, would benefit from a figure like Justin alongside him. But, look, it’s all pretty raw still and there’s still a few months until England need to work out what they wanna do, and who knows, JL might find that he wants to have a crack at it, but we’ve just got to wait and see, and let time heal a little bit.”
He, however, did suggest that that Langer might not look to take up a new coaching assignment anytime soon as he was “hurt” after CA’s reluctance to continue working with him.
“Look, he [Langer] needs to work that out [whether he wants to coach England in the future]. I get the feeling that doing it straight away, doing this opportunity right now, it just might be a bit soon. He is hurt, I know that. He’s been hurt – you don’t need to be Einstein to see that and work that out, but he needs a bit of time to heal and dust himself off and work out whether he sees himself as a career coach or was coaching Australia the pinnacle and does he now want to go off into the corporate world, or do public speaking or do some commentary or a number of other things? I don’t think he’s going to be short on opportunities. So, he needs to work that out.”
