Out of all the Best Performances articles we have done, most of them have been about the great Australian players from the golden era and we have 2 of them coming today. Every player of those teams can find a mention in this list because they were the best in the world and no one was close as a team to matching them. Today we will talk about a batter who has played over 100 Test Matches for Australia but he never got in the same status as a Ricky Ponting or an Allan Border. His name is Justin Langer who was rill recently the head coach of the Australian cricket team.
We have to talk about his records before we talk about his best performances. He has played 105 Test Matches which is impressive and in those many matches he got 7696 runs at a good average of 45.27 with 23 Test hundreds and 3 Double Hundreds as well. He did not play many ODIs so he will be the first batter in our series that will have all the best performances from one format. So, let’s see the Top 5.
250 vs England (2002)
This is the best performance in the career of Justin Langer and also his highest test score and it came against his favorite Rival which is Engaged and it came at the iconic MCG in 2002. Australia were batting first in this test match and Justin Langer came out to open and he was just hitting fours all around and he played 407 balls for his 250. He hit 30 fours and 1 six which means a total of 126 runs in boundaries and his strike rate was 61.43 and Australia won this match by 5 wickets.
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223 vs India (2000)
The second innings on this list was 223 vs India in 2000 at the SCG and in this match it was a dominant performance by Australia and it was lead by this incredible performance by Justin Langer. India were bowled out cheaply then Justin Langer came in at number 3 and was in attack mode and he did not spare any of the bowlers as in 355 balls he made 223 runs while hitting 30 fours meaning 120 runs in boundaries and he was striking at 62.82. Australia won this match by an innings and 141 runs. That team was the best in the world.
215 vs New Zealand (2004)
His third double hundred in test cricket and he has now scored double Hundreds against 3 top class bowling attacks in a space of 4 years and this was against New Zealand in 2004. Australia were batting first and at the top of the order Justin Langer played in his style and the New Zealand bowling attack was frustrated and he faced 367 balls in which he hit 25 fours and 3 sixes which means 118 runs in boundaries. He was batting at a strike rate of 58.42. Australia won this match by 213 Runs and this was at the Adelaide Oval.
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179* and 52 vs England (1998)
This was the match where Justin Langer got his first test hundred and not only that he got a 50 in the second innings to have a aggregate score of 231 runs in the test match. This was against a very good English bowling attack. In the first innings Justin Langer was the only one who batted and scored runs as he faced 350 balls for his 179* in which he hit only 13 fours but he made sure that Australia got to a respectable score. Then in the Third innings he again made a valuable 52 from 183 balls and in the end Australia won this match by 205 runs. All of the performances by Justin Langer were coming in winning causes.
59 and 127 vs Pakistan (1999)
This outstanding batting performance was against a bowling line-up of Pakistan which had Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis and Shoaib Akhtar bowling at the same time and that is the reason this is in this list. In the first batting innings for Australia Justin Langer scored an important 59 runs from 106 balls and rescued Australia once again but his defining performance of this match came in the fourth Innings where he made a brilliant 127 runs from 295 balls hitting 12 fours and guided Australia home to a historic chase of 369 runs. This was in 1999.
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