FORMER Australian all-rounder Simon O\u2019Donnell believes the standards for the Australian cricket squad have slipped after the exit of Justin Langer.<\/p>\n
Langer spent four years as Australia\u2019s coach, taking the helm in 2018 after the ball tampering scandal, then resigning in early February of 2022, declining a short-term extension in the process.<\/p>\n
Upon Langer\u2019s departure, assistant coach Andrew McDonald filled the vacant top job, a move which O\u2019Donnell suggests may have destabilised the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeadership via negotiation never works, I don\u2019t care where you are, or what sport it is or what business it is, leadership of your own people via negotiation does not work because the standards will eventually drop,\u201d O\u2019Donnell said on SEN Breakfast<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cNow Justin Langer, whether he was right or wrong, whether his time was up or it wasn\u2019t up, Cricket Australia made that call, the important part of Cricket Australia making that call was the input of the players.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were very happy then for the new coach Andrew McDonald to come in, they felt that was the best way to go.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my opinion, I\u2019m not saying they\u2019re wrong, I\u2019m definitely not saying Andrew McDonald is not a good coach, but what I\u2019m saying is there\u2019s a shift of power here.\u201d<\/p>\n Langer was known as quite a firm hand when coaching and, for O\u2019Donnell, the absence of that is leading the players to see themselves as being more in charge than they should be.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen people start to think that they\u2019re more in charge than they are, they might start to take the odd shortcut, do something a little differently and the preparation isn\u2019t quite there as it generally would,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m a very interested observer, it\u2019s an old saying and I like it, the day you start letting the animals run the zoo, you\u2019re history.<\/p>\n \u201cNow the summer will tell us where it\u2019s at\u2026 we need a holistic look at what\u2019s going on, we need the canvas to be painted by the end of the summer to see where we\u2019re at.\u201d<\/p>\n O’Donnell acknowledges that Australia\u2019s performance in the T20 World Cup hasn\u2019t been particularly poor, however is urging the team to look at the bigger picture.<\/p>\n \u201cQuite right [we\u2019ve only lost one game so far], but I\u2019ll tell you what we haven\u2019t been, we haven\u2019t been on our game for a World Cup,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been talking the World Cup up for twelve months and how settled we are, what the line-up is going to do, and then suddenly it was all over the place.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve played without grasping the emotional side of the World Cup and blasting off with it.<\/p>\n \u201cOur captain has been in questionable form, Steve Smith, is he in, is he out, there\u2019s a bit of a changing of the guard going on as well, so I want to sit back and have a look.<\/p>\n \u201cJust keep an eye on preparation and how people are going about things because it only takes a really small percentage of turning off to make a big difference at an elite level.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re not doing everything at 100 per cent, you\u2019re just at 98, eventually that will tell, you won\u2019t play the role you should be playing, and things will start to crumble.\u201d<\/p>\n