Former pacer unimpressed with Australia's coach shift strategy

Tim Payne with Pat Cummins (Source: AP Newsroom)

In the recent past, Australia's coaching setup has seen radical shift. From Justin Langer to Andrew McDonald, the head coaches were swapped in a snap. While, the Cricket Australia was at the helm of things during the transition, some senior players were blamed for it too.

Now, former Aussie pacer Simon O'Donnell has commented on the shift of power in the Kangaroo's dressing room, saying that it is the main reason for declining standards of the team.

Langer left his role six months before his contract was about to expire due to non-backing of the players especially skipper Pat Cummins who felt he was method was hard to play with. O'Donnell mentioned that taking shortcuts have hampered their preparation for the World Cup.

"When people start to think that they're more in charge than they are, they might start to take the odd shortcut, do something a little differently and the preparation isn't quite there as it generally would,

"Now Justin Langer, whether he was right or wrong, whether his time was up or wasn't up, Cricket Australia made that call, the important part of Cricket Australia making that call was the input of the players,"

He added that there is no doubt over the capability of current coach McDonald but giving too much authority to players have caused certain complexities in the team.

"In my opinion, I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm definitely not saying Andrew McDonald is not a good coach, but what I'm saying is there's a shift of power here,

"I'm a very interested observer, it's an old saying and I like it, the day you start letting the animals run a zoo, you're history."

To conclude, his opinion was that they can't let the players run the team to which he compared them to the zoo ran by animals. His final say was that the next summer will tell the entire story whether they have done well enough or not.

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