Australian batting marvel Travis Head has flourished since the departure of former coach Justin Langer, who tried to curtail the South Australians attacking flair, according to former Test captain Tim Paine.

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Head smashed a swashbuckling 140 in the second Test against India in Adelaide and is the leading run-scorer, for both sides, after the opening two matches with 240 runs. He’s scored four of his seven Test centuries since Langer was axed in February, 2022.

That included a match-winning 163 in Australia’s World Test Championship triumph, also against India, at The Oval in 2023, having been dropped from the Australian team when Langer was coach in 2020 and also losing his Cricket Australia contract.

Langer was also part of the selection committee that dropped Head for the final Test on the 2019 Ashes tour.

Paine, who was Test skipper when Head was dropped, revealed that the left-hander battled with the approach of Langer and his assistant coaches to try to tame his attacking ways.

“I don’t think either of them will mind me saying this, but I think he and JL used to have a real difference of opinion,” Paine said on Tuesday.

“You’ve got Test greats in commentary and you’ve got a Test great (Langer) that’s coaching and Graeme Hick at the time who’d scored 101 first class hundreds as his batting coach (offering advice).

“They were trying really hard for him to work on his defence and it wasn’t the way he wanted to go about it, but he was a young Test player who was trying to impress and trying to stay in the team, so he was trying to please a bit of everyone.

“I think that’s been the major shift in his output because he is sticking true to the way he wants to play.

“At times he’s going to fail and at times he’s gonna have lean patches, but he’s going to be super aggressive, he’s going to play his shots and he’s going to try and be a matchwinner and we’re just seeing him blossom at the moment in all formats of the game.”

Head has spoken glowingly of the freedom he has been allowed to play with under new coach Andrew McDonald and Australian captain Pat Cummins.

That also helped him punish the Indians with a matchwinning century in the ODI World Cup final in 2023. Head blasted 137 to power Australia to victory.

“He doesn’t worry about what (works for others), and I’ve played a little bit with him, he doesn’t care what people think about his technique or how it looks,” Paine told SEN Breakfast.

“He does a lot of things where commentators would say, ‘Oh, why has he done that?’ or his feet are off the ground and he’s playing away from his body.

“But Travis Head plays how Travis Head plays and he has absolute conviction in the way he goes about it.

“It is amazing to watch a guy just at the peak of his powers at the moment.”