Yes Moments: JL's amazing debut tale

Justin Langer’s maiden outing as Australia’s cricket coach against the West Indies in Guyana – the sole English-speaking (and cricket-playing) outpost in South America – arrives early on Monday (3am AEST) via a fairly standard career progression.

Decorated international playing tenure spanning almost two decades, coaching apprenticeship as batting guru for the national team then a highly successful and ongoing stint as Western Australia’s first-class and limited overs coach made him an obvious temporary appointment while Darren Lehmann takes a break.

But Langer’s advent as a Test cricketer, against the same Caribbean opponents albeit in a bygone age when they remorselessly ruled the game, makes for a far more unlikely tale.

One that the 45-year-old likes to recount with trademark passion, self-effacing humour and only the barest whiff of historic embellishment.

Langer was a few weeks shy of his 22nd birthday when Richie Richardson’s touring party – a feared but not-quite-so ferocious incarnation of the West Indian teams that had reigned unbeaten for almost two decades – began their 1992-93 Australian tour with a 50-over carnival game at Lilac Hill in Perth.

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Langer was part of the Australian Cricket Board’s Invitational XI for that game that also featured former Australia greats Dennis Lillee and Bruce Yardley, as well as Langer’s WA teammate and Test aspirant Damien Martyn.

Langer was run out for two batting at No.6, Brian Lara swaggered to an effortless century that was a portent of records to come, and Martyn was subsequently named for his Test debut at the Gabba against a fast bowling battery of Curtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Ian Bishop and Patrick Patterson.

Langer returned his focus to the Sheffield Shield competition he had finished in such pomp the previous season with a match-defining 149 in the Final against a star-studded New South Wales which carried WA to victory and his name under the nose of the national selectors.

But ’92-93 had not been similarly bountiful – a sole century from six matches, a handful of frustratingly missed opportunities and a blow to the head while batting against Victoria at the WACA that had left him concussed and shy of match practice when the fourth Test was set to start in Adelaide.

A match that Langer was looking forward to watching on television given that Australia had eked out a 1-0 nil lead over the first three Tests and had captain Allan Border guardedly eyeing his first series win against the West Indies in 14 years as a Test cricketer.

Allan Border ended his career without Test series success against the West Indies // Getty

So when Langer, boiling eggs for lunch at home in Perth on Test eve, received a phone call from WA’s then cricket manager (and former Test leg-spinner) Tony Mann telling him to pack his gear and get to Adelaide because he was in the Test team for tomorrow, he was understandably stunned.

The reason for his dramatic call-up – Martyn had been ruled out after copping coach Bob Simpson’s errant thumb in his eye during one of Simpson’s beloved pre-match fielding sessions – was almost as unlikely as the way Langer then honed his game to take on the Caribbean quicks a day later.

Having danced about the kitchen with his gleeful parents, and dashed upstairs to grab his favourite (and recently unused) bat and batting gloves, he co-opted his younger brother Jonathon to toss him 20 ‘throw downs’ in the backyard before getting his kit and his racing mind to Perth airport.

As Langer tells it, he was awed to find Simpson waiting for him at the other end, stunned to walk past his heroes now Test teammates partaking of a pre-match tipple in the lobby bar at his Adelaide hotel and reduced to adolescent euphoria on finding his Baggy Green cap among gifts waiting in the room he was to share with then vice-captain Ian Healy.

And while Langer’s path from boiled eggs to the cauldron of cricket’s most heated rivalry of the era was surreal, the Test match to which he was summoned was equally removed from routine.

In order to maximise the pulling power of the great West Indies team, Australian officials had programmed a triangular one-day series (also featuring Pakistan) staged alternately with the Tests which meant Border and Richardson’s men had faced off 10 times before the Adelaide game began.

That included two ODI Finals matches immediately prior to the fourth Test, which the West Indies had won thanks to a reduced target in the rain-affected first match in Sydney, and the genius of Lara who guided his team home after they crashed to 3-23 in pursuit of 148 in the second.

The angst of those results added extra urgency to the hold that Australia had bravely established on the Frank Worrell Trophy thanks a second Test triumph in Melbourne, a tantalising touch of the prize they had not grasped since the 5-1 humiliation heaped upon the West Indies in 1975-76.

A result that had effectively fuelled then skipper Clive Lloyd and his similarly stung and proud teammates to administer the same chilling ruthlessness to all foes over the succeeding 20 years.

And Adelaide Oval itself was an atypical scene for an Australia Day Test match, with the heavy cloud, bouts of rain and often-covered pitch creating conditions more akin to northern England than South Australia as the tourists opted to bat first and were skittled inside a day for 252.

A Test that subsequently went on to yield the lowest runs aggregate for four completed innings in the grand old ground’s 132-year history.

Even though Patterson had fallen by the wayside – his dissatisfaction with West Indies administrators leading him to walk from the field during the first Test without notifying his skipper – a four-pronged pace attack remained, and Bishop was the fastest of those.

A gentle, devout soul off the playing field, Bishop had been rated by Pakistan skipper Imran Khan as the quickest in the world at that time and not a bowler to encounter in typically sunny flat Adelaide Oval conditions let alone late on a dark and ominous afternoon.

Which was when Langer arrived as a Test batsman, amid a flurry of pad straps, half-chewed gum and vexed crowd wishes as he walked wide-eyed and wobbly legged to the middle with the orange lights on the foreboding old scoreboard illuminating a scoreline of 1-1.

Langer is felled by Makhaya Ntini in his 100th Test in 2006 // Getty

Langer’s recollections of his baptism at the hands of Bishop – who had removed Mark Taylor in his opening over and whose lithe grace belied his frightening speed and brutal intent – remain clear despite the harrowing head knock he sustained, and are corroborated by the bowler’s own recollections.

“I remember running in to bowl to him just before he got hit, and it was so dark and gloomy and obviously you want to test out the new boy in Test cricket,” Bishop, now a respected and insightful television commentator, recounted in the lead-up to Langer’s 100th Test in 2006.

"With Justin at the crease I thought to myself, ‘There’s an opening here’.

“He got a good clatter – it was full on the helmet and I was a little bit worried for a while.

“It was unfortunate. It wasn’t my wish to clatter him on the helmet … but helmets do get in the way sometimes.”

Langer survived not only to stumps that day, to a maiden Test half-century (and his team’s top score) in the second innings, and to become the 10th Australian to reach 100 Test appearances and ultimately his nation’s all-time leading first-class runs scorer.

He also endured countless more “clatters” to the head, the most serious of which – from the first ball he faced in his 100th Test that forced him to spend most of that milestone in a darkened hotel room – prompted close friends and family to counsel retirement.

But he played on for four more years, for Australia, WA and Somerset, and now embarks on a stint as an international coach that many – including Langer himself – see as a potential pointer to him taking over the role when Lehmann chooses to step aside, likely in the next three or four years.

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And while that first Test match provided the canvas for one of cricket’s great modern-day cricket debut tales, it remains best remembered as the narrowest Test match result (one run) in almost 140 years.

Which meant Border, who like Langer entered that match clutching a long-cherished dream, was destined to end his career without success over the team that tormented him and so many others from rival nations through the late 70s, 80s and early 90s.

As was exemplified in Craig McDermott’s eyes when he lost his wicket and the match was decided under symbolically sombre skies late on the fourth afternoon.

When the West Indians danced their celebratory jig, not seen in the Test arena for more than two decades since.

The Windies celebrate their one-run win in Langer's debut Test // Getty

And when Border hurled the cricket ball he had been nervously tossing from hand to hand as Langer, McDermott and Tim May edged ever closer to that elusive series-securing win with fury into the floor of the Adelaide Oval dressing room, and stormed away in brooding silence.

If Langer’s first match as coach – at Guyana’s Providence Stadium against the newly crowned World T20 champions – is half as poignant and powerful as his maiden appearance in Tests, he’ll have a sportsman’s night tale on which he can dine for a further 25 years.