'Feel confident to deal with people, situations and cricket' – Langer on coaching journey

Langer, who played his last professional game in 2009, tried to get into coaching almost immediately after his retirement. "A lot of people don't know this: when Mickey Arthur got the job as head coach of Western Australia [in 2010], I applied for that job as well and that was literally straight out of the game," he said in a revealing chat with ESPNcricinfo.

"I thought, 'Oh yeah, I've got good leadership, I know the game, no worries.' But then Mickey got the job and I'm glad he did because I had to find some grounding somewhere else, and that was three years working with the Australian team, and I learned a lot of lessons then.

"When Mickey got the Australian job [in 2011], I also applied for that, and I wasn't ready for that, but I still applied because people kept saying, 'You've got leadership and you know the game, so you should apply for it'. It was a really tough experience going through that process. I'm glad I went through it, and I'm also glad I didn't get the job then because then I had six years at Western Australia. There's no way I could've done the job I've done for [the last] 14 months without having that six years' experience."

Langer enjoyed great success at Western Australia, who won two 50-over titles during his tenure. However, not all was hunky-dory even back then, as was the case when he took over as coach of the national team last year. "It couldn't have been better grounding," he recalled. "It was all the same issues, all the same problems, just with less scrutiny.

"I've learned how to deal with it, and I feel confident to deal with people, game situations, game plans, cricket. But what I had to learn was the scrutiny of the job, and that's just another part of my evolution as a coach.

"You're always evolving and learning, and that's one of the great things about the job. If you don't, you might as well give up. I'm certainly doing it. The first six months of my job were so hard - I didn't enjoy the job much."

After their semi-final finish at the ICC Men's Cricket World Cup 2019, Langer and his team now face a new challenge: they are on a mission to become the first Australian side since Steve Waugh's all-time great outfit in 2001 to lift the Ashes in England. The 48-year-old believes that playing in England through the last couple of months will be highly beneficial for his 14-man squad.

"The vision early on to have us playing some Australia A cricket and those three red-ball games - hopefully, that will give us a kick-start into the Ashes," he said. "The fact we kept players like Marnus Labuschagne, Cameron Bancroft and Peter Siddle playing county cricket, so as many Australian players playing red-ball cricket as possible - that was all part of the planning for it."

The first Ashes Test begins at Edgbaston in Birmingham on Thursday, 1 August.