Justin Langer has teed off at “careless whispers” about Australian cricket, tensely firing back at suggestions Glenn Maxwell has been mistreated or misadvised. The national team coach was involved in a tense exchange with a journalist in Sydney when pressed on Maxwell’s Test hopes and why the allrounder was allegedly advised by Cricket Australia last year to turn down an English county gig.
Maxwell, who hasn’t played a Test since Australia’s 2017 tour of Bangladesh, was overlooked again in the squad for a two-Test series against Sri Lanka that starts later this month. Langer became incredibly terse when quizzed on why the player was discouraged from signing a county contract last year.
Maxwell detailed in a radio interview last year how he turned down offers to play domestic cricket in England. He was then overlooked for both an Australia A tour of India and Test tour of the UAE, denying him a rare chance to play some red-ball cricket.
Langer, arguably showing the strain of a taxing month in which he and his team had received widespread criticism on a range of issues, asked the reporter twice “are you certain that’s what happened?” regarding the county directive.
“You’re telling me it did happen,” he said during the heated back-and-forth. “I’m asking did it happen? I’ve got zero knowledge of that ... careless whispers, eh? Sorry for getting grumpy. I don’t like getting grumpy but there’s so many stories that go around about so much stuff. The truth is a beautiful thing.”
Langer echoed the sentiment of chairman of selectors Trevor Hohns, who insisted on Wednesday it was wrong to infer that Maxwell’s character or behaviour was being held against him at the selection table. “There have been some reports about personality. It is literally false,” the former Test opener said.
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