Justin Langer: Australian head coach's future not guaranteed despite Ashes win

As far as head coaches go, you would rather be in Justin Langer's shoes than in Chris Silverwood's.

The England coach spent the fourth Ashes Test stuck in Melbourne with Covid-19 while his team produced its solitary show of resistance for the series, and was on hand to watch four losses.

He fronted up to the media in Hobart on Monday after the final defeat but his relatively brief tenure is widely expected to be over.

Australia's coach got to watch all of his team's wins, and can now point to the Ashes trophy that remains in the cabinet alongside the first men's Twenty20 World Cup that he won only a couple of months earlier. It has been a profitable time for him.

Yet Langer is not guaranteed to stay in his job either, with the end of his four-year contract approaching this coming June, and with the need to move sooner than that to install a successor if the contract is not renewed.

That may seem like a curious move to be considering given his recent success, and his stated desire to stay in the job. Plenty of his former Australian team-mates who are now pundits, most influentially Ricky Pontingexternal-link, have endorsed him in this regard, insisting that results overrule any other considerations.

But the equation is not as simple as Langer equalling wins. It is well known that a number of players were deeply frustrated with his coaching style in early 2021, and looked for assurances that his tenure would end with that contract expiry.

You could argue that Australia's recent success has coincided with the players being reassured that there was a time limit in place. It also coincided with the coach altering his style to be less of a presence around training.

Whether this equanimity could be maintained if Langer signed on