Justin Langer has been making headlines across the course of the past week after departing his post as the head coach of the Australian XI, a position he had held since 2018.
While his coaching style and methods have been debated, ad nauseam, by past and present players, the success of his playing career was significantly less controversial.
Langer turned himself from a domestic talent for Western Australia into one of Australia’s greatest ever top-order batters. With opening partner Matthew Hayden, they created Australia’s most prolific opening line-up, ranking as number two for total runs by averaging a partnership of 51.41 for a total of 5655 runs.
Individually, the punchy opener played in 105 tests and eight one-day internationals throughout his career and finished with 23 centuries at an average of 45.27.
For an Australian player, Langer, currently, has the 29th highest batting average, is eighth highest in total runs and batted in the seventh most innings. His high score of 250 ranks equals 12th amongst Australian players.
In the wake of his departure as the nation's steward, we took a look at five of Justin Langer’s career-best moments with the bat in hand.
3. Langer gets his highest score of 223 against India - 2000
After winning the first two games of India’s 1990/00 tour of Australia, the home team was looking to finish off a 3-0 sweep of their guests.
After an impressive pace attack from McGrath and Lee, the Indians were bowled out for only 150, their second-lowest tally of the series.
Openers Greg Blewett and Michael Slater were primed to get the team off to a big start and put the game out of reach.
Instead, Slater got out cheaply for a single run, and Blewett made 19. That meant that it was up to Langer to impose himself in the match. In marathon innings, Langer batted for over 500 minutes and faced 355 balls.
His lengthy innings resulted in his highest run tally at the time, 223 runs. This was close to 50 per cent more than the visiting team scored in their first innings. By the end of his career, he would amass that score only one other time.
Steve Waugh (57) and Ricky Ponting (141) were his main partners at the crease throughout the innings, but it was Langer who stole the show.
India was then bowled out for 261 runs, giving Australia a win by an innings and 141 runs.
Despite his heroic batting, he was beaten out for the player of the match. McGrath took five wickets in both innings and was awarded the honours instead.
