AUSTRALIAN test captain Tim Paine has defended head coach Justin Langer amid reports of player unrest and dressing room leaks.<\/p>\n
Reports of tension within the Australian camp emerged after the test series loss to India earlier this year, and before Langer and team manager Gavin Dovey were reportedly involved in a verbal altercation with a Cricket Australia staffer during the recent T20 series against Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
Malcolm Conn, a former communications manager at Cricket Australia, wrote a scathing article in The Sydney Morning Herald<\/em> criticising Langer\u2019s \u201cvolatile\u201d management style.<\/p>\n Cricket Australia CEO Nick Hockley publicly backed Langer, praising his work in \u201craising the culture, values and behaviours of the Australian men’s team\u201d since replacing Darren Lehmann in 2018.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no hiding from it, it\u2019s been a tough week, certainly for Justin Langer than anyone else,\u201d Paine told SEN Hobart\u2019s Jack and Painey<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom a story out of Bangladesh about an argument with an in-house journo and then for it to open up a lot of old wounds in the media \u2013 albeit some had been leaked from where we think is inside \u2013 disappointed in that.<\/p>\n \u201cBut at the end of the day, we\u2019ve had discussions. The stuff that was reported if we\u2019re totally honest wasn\u2019t anything new, this is stuff that\u2019s been dragged up from an Ashes series two or three years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had ongoing discussions with JL, JL\u2019s had ongoing discissions with me and his players about us always wanting to get better.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just been a bit of shame I think in the last week that a lot of the failings around Australian cricket have been pinned on JL. That\u2019s certainly not the case.\u201d<\/p>\n Australia crashed to consecutive 4-1 T20 series defeats to the West Indies and Bangladesh, heaping further pressure on Langer.<\/p>\n Paine revealed the leaders within the Australian team and Langer had some \u201creally robust conversations\u201d ahead of the T20 World Cup and the Ashes, both slated for later this year.<\/p>\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t lived up to our own standards on the field, we haven\u2019t won enough games of cricket and that\u2019s pretty much put us all under pressure,\u201d Paine said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut that\u2019s the world we live in, we\u2019re playing professional sport, you\u2019re judged really harshly when you don\u2019t win, we\u2019ve clearly had a bit of a rough trot with white-ball cricket, the red-ball team hasn\u2019t been playing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had some really robust conversations amongst our leaders in the last few days and we\u2019re really looking forward to the next six months with JL.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was important that myself, Aaron Finch, Pat Cummins and the leaders of Australian cricket got around him, discussed things that needed to be discussed, and then got around him and supported him and looked to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Langer’s contract runs through to the middle of 2022.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n