Langer's coaching ride is doco's dramatic sub-plot

As much as 'The Test' – the extraordinary eight-part series airing on Amazon Prime Video from Thursday – documents the fall and rise of Australia's men's cricket team, it also delivers a riveting and often raw insight into Justin Langer's turbulent introduction to international coaching.

Starting point for the unprecedented fly-on-the-wall look at elite-level cricket is Langer's appointment as Darren Lehmann's replacement in the aftermath of the Cape Town ball-tampering scandal, an incident that Langer claims provoked a 'physical reaction" within him.

"I think life's about projects," Langer surmised, in announcing his overriding objective is to once more make Australians proud of their fallen men's outfit.

But for all the pride he felt in taking on the role, and for all his noble ambitions to rebuild the team's culture and remake their tarnished image in the eyes of the nation, it becomes painfully clear that restoring the team's on-field competitiveness is the challenge that comes to consume him.

It's a task that leads Langer – the most constant and compelling presence throughout eight hours of captivating television – into decidedly dark places, and his team to the edge of insurrection in their search for resurrection.

Langer's 105-Test playing career coincided with the men's team most successful modern era, but when he became coach in May 2018 Australia were ranked fifth in ODI cricket (a year before their World Cup defence) and third in Tests.

Furthermore, their top-order batting had become so flaky they suffered regular collapses in all forms of cricket, with that problem likely to be exposed and exploited by an upcoming Test campaign against top-ranked India then the World Cup tournament and Ashes against a rampant England in the UK.

As he caustically observes during the humiliating 0-5 ODI drubbing by England in 2018, his first assignment as coach: "Some of you guys have got so many theories … you’re not good enough to have theories.

"Concentrate on your technique; concentrate on your next ball; concentrate on competing," he exhorts, as his players stare straight ahead in the search for answers, or at the dressing room floor to avoid his gaze.

The brutality of such an overtly results-driven industry is exposed, as is the passion and the pain held by players who must endure the double indignity of being beaten while the world watches and then cop a searing performance review behind what were previously closed doors.

While the savage critique delivered at the end of that disastrous ODI campaign – "don't think it's okay to lose five-nil to England, because the truth is it's not" – raised the eyebrows of consultant coaches and long-time colleagues Ricky Ponting and Adam Gilchrist, Langer had agonised over its timing.

"Up to that stage, he was being a really nurturing, coaching coach," skipper Tim Paine observes.

"And then when he saw that sort of (on-field) display, I think he picked his time pretty well to show the other side, that he is a really passionate coach."

Aaron Finch, who replaced Paine as ODI captain after the England thrashing, echoed his predecessor's sentiment.

"Everything you hear about JL (Langer), it's true – he can be ruthless at times, but it's for a reason," Finch says.

Langer had begun his tenure by throwing a consoling arm around the bruised group and using a visit to the World War One Western Front battlefields en route to the 2018 UK tour as ground zero for a new team ethos and culture.

A similar visit to Gallipoli by Steve Waugh's ODI squad prior to the 2001 Ashes campaign was decried by some as crassly jingoistic, but the rationale underpinning the 2018 exercise (and a subsequent sojourn to the Gallipoli Peninsula before the World Cup a year later) becomes poignantly apparent.

When Tim Paine suffers a facial injury during an ODI against England, but refuses to leave the field for medical treatment, Langer uses the graphic example to advise players he won't brook complaints about minor injury niggles or fleeting sore spots.

"Think about what we saw in France," he says.

Even more effective is the team gathering during the Western Front visit when players are each handed an envelope containing a message of support and inspiration from family members at home, an exchange that left many in tears and would be revisited by the coach at appropriate times over the ensuing year.

"What I want you to keep thinking about, not just as you play this match but every time you represent Australia, you're not just representing us, you're representing the whole country," Langer later reiterated as pressure mounted during the 2019 Ashes series in the UK.

"When you get to that moment when you think 'it's getting a bit hard here', I want you to think about a few other things.

"Not just your country; I want you to think about your mum and dad, I want you to think about your brothers and your sisters, I want you to think about your own little kids, I want you to think about your mates.

"Because that moment when the pressure comes on, that's when the steel's going to come.

"And when you've got that steel, you'll be okay."

But not all his methods were so warmly embraced, and as the team's win-loss ledger slipped deeper into the red after the England debacle, the players began voicing concerns they were being over-critiqued.

Initially, the push back was led by Usman Khawaja who queried the value of employing game-day scenarios at training, whereby players who were 'dismissed' during a nets session were immediately rotated to the non-strikers' end and forced to await their next turn at bat.

An uncomfortable exchange between the pair during Australia's failed Test series against Pakistan in the UAE was followed by an even more revealing moment between the coach and Finch amid drama in the first home Test series after Cape Town, against India in Adelaide.

Having failed in the first innings and already fearing the fledgling Test career he so dearly coveted might already be slipping away, Finch didn't review his dismissal in the second innings and was explaining that decision to teammates in the dressing room when confronted by an agitated Langer.

Still wearing his pads, as well as burning anger and disappointment, Finch found himself eyeballed by an incredulous coach who had raced downstairs from the team viewing room to seek answers.

Langer made his displeasure known before walking away, shaking his head in disbelief.

Weeks later, in the wake of Australia's Boxing Day Test loss to India at the MCG, Langer conceded he struggled to accept defeat and that shortcoming was often reflected in his body language.

His players took their chance to make a few observations of their own, notably Paine and vice-captain Pat Cummins who claimed regular negative assessments were starting to affect performance.

The tense mood was then summed up by Khawaja who pointed out some members of the group felt as if they were "walking on egg shells".

But as India again dominated in the New Year's Test at the SCG the following week, Langer received the sharpest feedback from his wife, Sue, over the breakfast table at their Sydney hotel.

"She got really upset and said, 'I don’t like what it's doing to you … you're not smiling'," Langer reveals.

"That was a massive wake-up call for me. It was really tough; it really got to me."

It was a New Year message from former Australia women's captain Belinda Clark, acting in the role of Cricket Australia's High Performance Manager, that helped Langer see the need to fundamentally change.

He vowed to "let go of stuff that I shouldn't be so stressed about" and during Australia's now-famous ODI tour to India that preceded the World Cup, set about strengthening his relationship with Finch by working intensively with the struggling opener in the practice nets.

Langer also divested greater responsibility to individual players on how they might train and prepare for matches, which he in turn hoped would make them more resilient and less reliant when faced with daunting decisions out in the middle.

"I do think he's mellowed out a fair bit," Khawaja says of his coach.

The fact that Langer's change of tack brought with it a sustained period of on-field success for the ODI outfit meant the next challenge – reintegrating Steve Smith and David Warner into the team at the expiration of their suspensions – became more manageable.

In no small part, that was due to the manner in which the Cape Town incident and its fall-out was dealt with at the first team meeting Smith and Warner attended as the squad assembled in the UAE for an ODI series against Pakistan.

"It was a dark time for everyone in this room, but what are we going to do about it?" Langer asks the squad in addressing the ball-tampering question head-on.

"Well we learn from it, and we're going to make Australian cricket awesome again.

"And we're going to keep moving forward and getting better."

Despite his outward defiance, Langer felt misgivings as to the hostility the banned pair would face upon arrival in the UK for the World Cup, and the resultant impact that might flow through to the wider player group.

During the preceding home Test summer, as India captain Virat Kohli goaded Australia's players on the field and crowds in the grandstands, Langer lamented his team's ability to return verbal fire because of the "good blokes" pact they had willingly embraced following Cape Town.

"I think you must all be thinking there's a double standard," Langer told his men after a combative day's play during the Test against India at Perth.

"The way their captain's carrying on, and we have to be really careful.

"We do not need to abuse him because we have got zero to gain from that.

"But there is banter, where you stick up for your mates."

Prior to the previous year's UK tour, Langer had warned his team the world's media and cricket-watching public were waiting for Australia's men's team "to slip up", and he knew that pressure would only rise with Smith and Warner back in the ranks.

But nothing had prepared him for the level and longevity of vitriol that poured from the terraces and streets of Britain, from the start of the World Cup campaign to all-but the final days of the subsequent Ashes quest.

Langer describes the peddlers of such scorn as "ignorant and disrespectful" and admits it initially made him angry.

"There's not one person who's booing who hasn't made a mistake in their life," he notes.

However, when he sees his players respond to the tedious taunts hurled at them during matches and training sessions – by laughing at the childishness of the antagonists – he takes encouragement from the squad's collective mindset.

And he even breaks one of his own previously inviolable rules.

In the wake of a horror couple of days in Manchester that left Shaun Marsh and Khawaja injured and ultimately hobbled Australia's World Cup ambitions, he advocates that his players harness the close bonds with their teammates and "play on a bit of emotion" rather than rely solely on their hard-wired cricket skills.

Of the lessons Langer learned across his first year and a bit as Australia coach, the one he claims stands out – having overseen an extraordinary intra-squad trial game to decide the make-up of his Ashes touring party – was to be "a bit more ruthless in selection".

"We need people who are going to buy into the team," he says, explaining the rationale behind 'gut-feel' calls such the inclusion of fringe player turned batting hero, Marnus Labuschagne.

Then, for all the euphoria that accompanied Australia's win in the opening Ashes Test and the edge-of-seat drama conjured by Smith's injury (and Labuschagne's unscripted entry) in the next match at Lord's, it's the third Test at Leeds that provides perhaps the documentary's most absorbing insights.

The helpless frustration shown by Langer and Smith throughout that memorable final day, as England's Ben Stokes snatched victory from Australia's fumbling fingers, proves as spellbinding as it does excruciating.

Even more revelatory is the day-after debrief when a clearly shattered Australia squad is forced to sit through footage of England's logic-defying last-wicket partnership and explain the thinking behind the key decisions that ultimately cost them a Test match.

That meeting, as a nation outside the hotel walls celebrates a public holiday and the last-gasp revival of their team's Ashes aspirations, culminates in a stand-off between Langer and Paine that lays bare the depth of dedication and emotional investment professional sportspeople hold for their chosen craft.

When Paine eventually concedes that mistakes were made, but then admits it's a tough concession to make in front of his crestfallen team, Langer tells him: "That's not a weakness mate, that's a strength".

"Because we're all human and it's good to admit weakness or vulnerability in front of your mates."

It's a creed that might easily form the epitaph of Langer's time as Australia coach, whenever that ends.

And it neatly encapsulates the evolution of Australia's men's cricket team, which has played out against the most uncompromising scrutiny – firstly on the playing field, and now on the screen.

The Test begins streaming on Amazon Prime Video from March 12.

Gillette ODI Series v New Zealand

Australia squad: Aaron Finch (c), Ashton Agar, Alex Carey (vc), Pat Cummins (vc), Josh Hazlewood, Marnus Labuschagne, Mitch Marsh, Jhye Richardson (SA series only), Kane Richardson, D'Arcy Short, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Matthew Wade, David Warner, Adam Zampa.

New Zealand squad: Kane Williamson (c), Martin Guptill, Henry Nicholls, Ross Taylor, Tom Latham, Tom Blundell, Jimmy Neesham, Colin de Grandhomme, Mitchell Santner, Kyle Jamieson, Ish Sodhi, Matt Henry, Tim Southee, Lockie Ferguson, Trent Boult.

First ODI: March 13 at SCG. 2.30pm AEDT, Fox Cricket & Kayo

Second ODI: March 15 at SCG. 10.30am AEDT, Fox Cricket & Kayo

Third ODI: March 20 at Blundstone Arena. 2.30pm AEDT, Fox Cricket & Kayo