Brian Viner interviews Justin Langer: Smiling tiger tells England to regain hunger

Hatch Beauchamp in Somerset is about as different from Perth, Western Australia, as two English-speaking settlements can be. Which is one of the reasons Justin Langer, Hatch Beauchamp's temporary resident Aussie, is so enjoying himself this summer. "Mate, I say this with the utmost affection and respect, but it's like living in the olden days," he says, between mouthfuls of porridge at the Somerset team hotel in Bristol. "At home my life is a whirlwind. I've got my cricket, I have business ventures, I'm on the speaking circuit. Here, everything is slower. And my kids [he has four daughters] are loving it. Mate, they have a one-minute walk to school."

Another reason Langer is having a fabulous summer, even in the distinct absence of summer weather ("Mate, I'd rather play cricket in 50 degrees than 15 degrees"), is his prolific form with the bat, which has helped Somerset to climb to the top of the Second Division in the County Championship. He spent six weeks with Somerset last season and swiftly made his mark by scoring 342 against Surrey, eclipsing the highest-ever score by a Somerset batsman: 322 against Warwickshire by a certain Vivian Richards. Returning this season as captain, the little left-hander wasted no time in establishing new records. In April, he scored 315 against Middlesex. Not even Richards managed two triple centuries in county cricket; no other Somerset player ever has.

Somerset is not Langer's first county. He spent two years with Middlesex between 1998 and 2000, mentoring the young Andrew Strauss among others, but he had a prickly relationship with the then captain Mark Ramprakash, who once threatened to banish him from the field following a contretemps at Arundel. He smiles when I remind him. "We were both hungry young gladiators back then, mate. I have an incredible amount of admiration for Mark Ramprakash. In my opinion he's the best batsman in England, and actually I thought he should have been picked to play in the Ashes last year."

We will come to the last Ashes series - at the end of which Langer retired from international cricket with a Test average, as an opening batsman, of 45.27 - but let us first dwell a little longer on Somerset. I ask him, perhaps a little patronisingly, whether he is aware of those halcyon years when Richards, Ian Botham and Joel Garner graced the square at Taunton? "Of course, mate, those years are etched in folklore," he says, politely putting me in my place. "I've been reading Peter Roebuck's book about the history of Somerset and there's also some interesting stuff from much longer ago. There was a revolt by fans in 1952. And they had the same man-management problems way back in the time of W G Grace as they do now. I love that stuff."

Not everyone who excels at a sport is captivated by its history, but then Langer is nothing if not a singular fellow. "Nigel Wray, who owns Saracens rugby club, is one of my great friends," he tells me. "When I was 18 I came to England to play for Old Millhillians, and I ended up staying at his house for six months. Mate, he loves his sporting memorabilia. His house is like a museum. In fact, he bought Keith Miller's 1956 baggy green cap and gave it to me as a present. Mate, I was gobsmacked."

Langer fixes me with his intent gaze, as if daring me to suggest that he should have been anything other than gobsmacked. My colleague Angus Fraser, who forged an enduring friendship with Langer when they played together at Middlesex, had told me already that no Aussie cricketer was ever prouder to wear the baggy green cap.

"One of Steve Waugh's great legacies as captain, and there were lots of them, was that in many ways he brought the baggy green back to life," Langer says. "Some players over the years have exchanged their caps for bobbies' helmets or whatever. That wouldn't do for me. Since I was a little kid my ambition was to wear one, and when I received it [against the West Indies in 1993] the sense of achievement was just immense.

"In a way, that cap tells the story of my whole life. Everything I've learnt about myself and the pursuit of excellence, the places I've been, the people I've met, has been down to the game of cricket. Just a game? For Chrissakes! It's not a game, it's my whole life."

It stands to reason, therefore, that he must have agonised about retiring from Test cricket. But did he fret that his retirement was overshadowed by that of Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath? After all, he had scored more Test hundreds - 23 - than Ian Chappell and Dougie Walters, to name but two hugely celebrated players from yesteryear, yet was never really elevated to their national treasure status "No, mate. It was the perfect way to go out. To beat England 5-0, to be out there when the winning runs were scored ... it was a fairytale ending.

"And a hugely significant part of my evolution as a cricketer was not worrying any more what people thought, so getting less of a fanfare didn't bother me. In 1993 I felt that I was trying to prove myself, not only to journalists but also to [captain] Mark Taylor. At 23 or 24 that was huge pressure to put on myself, and it's why I only played a handful of Tests between 1993 and 1998.

"The key to sport, whether you're a boxer, a runner or a batter, is to be loose physically, to have a body like rubber, but a really tight mind. Mate, I was the other way round."

Once he effected the transposition, he never looked back, and his opening record with his great buddy Matthew Hayden is the most successful in Test history. All of which brings me to the obvious question: Langer, Warne, McGrath - can Australia really afford to lose such prodigious talent in one fell swoop?

"Well, Warney is impossible to replace, that's for sure. He's a genius, mate. Without Warney, the tight Tests will be harder to win. His bowling on the last day [in the second Ashes Test] at Adelaide was the biggest factor in our win, and we knew if we could beat England from there, we could beat them from anywhere. I reckon England knew that, too."

Two of the Englishmen most damaged by the Ashes steamrollering were his old protégé Strauss, and his Somerset team-mate Marcus Trescothick, who suffered vicariously, having left the tour with well publicised psychological difficulties. First, Trescothick, back in the Twenty20 fold surely as a prelude to his return to the Test arena: has Langer spent much time talking to him?

"Yeah, a lot. When I played against him for Australia I never liked him much, not because he's not a nice bloke, but because he's good, and if they're good we don't tend to like them.

"In fact he's an outstanding person, brilliant with our young guys at Somerset, and I reckon England must have missed his demeanour and his example round the dressing room enormously. He's working through his problems very well."

As for Strauss, was Langer surprised to see him struggling for runs earlier in the summer? "We all have dips in form, mate. I'll tell you this, county cricket is just the same as domestic cricket in Australia, in that everyone says they want to play for their country, but only a couple of guys in each team really walk the talk. I saw that in Straussy, in his work ethic, from the start.

"To me it was no coincidence that when England were doing well there were some really solid characters at the hub of the team: Tres, Straussy, [Michael] Vaughan. So I've been stoked to see Straussy making runs again. While he was struggling I texted him. I told him there was nothing wrong with his technique, but to trust himself and watch the ball out of the bowler's hand."

What other tips can he offer from the Langer manual? "One strategy I use is always to smile back at the bowler. Smile at them and they don't know what to do. Bowlers are all fire and brimstone, and if you smile at them they can lose a bit of the fire and brimstone, or get even more pent up. I remember batting against Curtly Ambrose. The most daunting thing about him wasn't his pace, it was that he kept smiling at you. You'd play and miss, he'd smile. Hit him for four, he'd smile. If he hit you on the body, he'd smile. I learnt a good lesson from him."

Speaking of lessons, what can England learn from Australia, not as winners but as losers? Can the 2006-07 Ashes series generate English renewal as the 2005 series did for Australia? "Mate, it depends how badly it hurt. I remember 12 September 2005, very clearly, sitting up there on the balcony at The Oval, next to Haydos [Hayden], Gilly [Adam Gilchrist], McGrath, and Punter [Ricky Ponting], watching those streamers everywhere, and Vaughan jumping around with champagne. That's when a little piece of kindling was lit.

"We got on the plane and that's when we started talking: where we went wrong, how we could do better, how we could get our disciplines back. There's a book by Scott Peck called The Road Less Travelled. During Steve Waugh's tenure that was our theme: do things a little bit different, things other teams wouldn't do. In 2005 we lost sight of that a little bit.

"But hurt can be the most energising thing. In that World XI game [in October 2005] I could feel the intensity was up, then we beat West Indies 3-0, South Africa 2-0 at home, South Africa 3-0 away. And [shortly before the Ashes] we went to boot camp. That was intense, mate, especially when Ricky made his speech. We hadn't had a shower for five days, we'd hardly eaten, we'd slept in the bush, and Punter didn't know he had to make a speech, but you'd have thought he was Winston Churchill. He had blokes ready to run through brick walls."

As it turned out, alas, the obstacle presented by England was more of a threadbare privet hedge. To switch metaphors, the riotous celebrations following England's Ashes victory suggested that the mountain had been scaled, not that the epic climb to the summit of world cricket had only just begun. Does Langer agree? "Put it this way," he says, with a smile. "There hasn't been a ticker-tape parade for the Australian cricket team for a very long time. And when there was one, after we won the Ashes in 1989, we used it to go from strength to strength. There's no doubt that the series in 2005 could have been the launching pad for England to dominate world cricket, but they took their foot off the pedal.

"John Buchanan [the former Australia coach] said once that the measure of a champion is longevity. A champion has to be physically, mentally and technically strong, not once, but over and over again. In lots of ways that's why I retired. You use the mountain metaphor. Well, by beating England 5-0 I felt I'd reached the top of my personal Mount Everest. I remember sitting in the changing room after we'd won the fourth Test, and looking across at Haydos. I'd only confided in him, Punter and my dad about my plan to retire, and he'd said, 'No, let's go together.'

"But he had a look in his eyes that day that would have made Rocky Balboa scared. And I thought to myself, 'I'm not sure if I can get that back'." A smile. "Saying that, when Haydos walks out to bat next summer, I might think I went too early. Mate, this game becomes addictive."