'Never seen her cry': Justin Langer's devastating revelation about wife

Justin Langer has revealed the shocking toll being the Australian cricket coach has had on his family.

Langer says watching his wife in tears is a watershed moment in his job, recalling how Sue broke down over breakfast with their children before a day's play in the Sydney Test match against India in January this year.

"I had never seen my wife cry," Langer told ESPN.

"She said: 'I just don't like what's happening here. I don't like what it's doing to you, I don't like what it's doing to us. People are so mean, what people are saying about you and the team and Australian cricket'.

"That was a real eye opener for me, that it was affecting my family."

The breakfast incident happened while India secured a 2-1 Test series win against Langer's Australians.

Soon after, Langer snapped at a journalist during a media conference ahead of the limited over series while discussing Glenn Maxwell's non-selection for Test cricket.

"I was also amazed at the backlash of that as well," Langer said.

"I apologised straight after the event, that's me.

"But I realised then and the way people said 'he's getting angry, he's losing it'.

"I didn't feel that but my wife was getting upset, that was a real moment.

"I've said privately and publicly a few times if I look back to my career, 1993 when I got dropped (from the Test team) for the first time, really tough time but pivotal in my life.

"I got dropped in 2001, a really, really tough time but pivotal in my life.

"I look to January 2019 in Sydney, really tough time but I have got no doubt it'll be a massive part of my evolution as a coach."

Langer faced with tough task for Ashes

Langer had just started his bromance with Matthew Hayden, Steve Waugh was at the peak of his powers and Marnus Labuschagne was a seven-year-old kid in South Africa.

The year was 2001 and it was a simpler time in many senses, especially for an Australian cricketer.

The 16-Test winning streak of Waugh's juggernaut, powered by some of the nation's greatest ever players and proponents of what their captain dubbed "mental disintegration", ended that year in stunning fashion at Kolkata.

But a comfortable 4-1 Ashes series win followed like clockwork; players and fans had come to expect as much from a team that hadn't surrendered the urn in England since 1985.

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Now, Steve Smith and Pat Cummins have basically no memories of Australia winning a Test series in England.

Almost exactly 18 years on from Australia's crushing innings-and-118-run victory in the first Test in Birmingham, Langer and Waugh are back in town with big plans to close the generation gap.

"I honestly didn't expect it to be 18 years. We have got to win this series," Waugh says.

"We have good depth and there is no reason we can't win. There are selection decisions to be made but we are not short of options.

"The Australia A team have been over here, we have a lot of players and we have been using the Dukes ball in our domestic cricket.

"No stone has been left unturned. There are no excuses."

with AAP