Matthew Hayden blasts Australia's cricket system and calls for player power

In an extraordinary attack on Australian cricket culture, legendary opening batsman Matthew Hayden has slammed the far-reaching influence of coaches and advocated a shifting of power to the players.

Sydney Morning Herald reported the 44-year old expressing his solution on Australia’s repeated struggles in the subcontinent by questioning the influence of their high-performance program.

Hayden argued, “It's not an easy problem, this. I don't like seeing just how high performance and I don't think cricket is in isolation here either – high performance tends to dominate the decisions that get made at the pointy end of the stick. Now in cricket, you as a captain are the person that is the go-to that needs to stand up and be responsible for your actions, be responsible for your team.”

He added, “But what I'm seeing a lot more of, more recently, is that the coach and the high-performance sector (are) controlling a lot of the decisions. Since when has the fact that you can sit on a force-plate test and test a little bit down on your response, then resonate with selectors. They then go, he is not jumping 140 kilograms so, therefore, he is out. I mean that is absolute horse shit.”

Although Australia continue to be dominant under home conditions, their performance in Asia has plummeted rapidly over the years with nine consecutive Test losses and three successive series whitewashes in the region.

With head coach Darren Lehmann offering an explanation for skipper Steve Smith’s withdrawal midway through the ODI series in Sri Lanka, plenty of former Aussie cricketers publicly stated their displeasure over the way in which things have been working within the system.

A veteran of 103 Tests and 161 ODIs, Hayden was one of the most feared stroke-makers in his heydays and adopted a distinctly fearless approach against both pace and spin alike.

On tackling the menace of spin, he felt, “Some of your best performances are always those that come when you have to bloody dig deep and when you're in subcontinent conditions, mate, you're digging deep the entire time. It's almost like ‘rabbit in the headlights’ stuff, the guys aren't organized in their thinking. It's like studying for an exam the night before you finish, you may as well forget it. You've got to have years of preparation.”

Hoping for a change, the left-hander believed, “The players have got to actually wrestle back some of their own power from within rather than listening to your physios, your strength and conditioning coaches, your high-performance manager and even your coach for that matter and actually dig in as a group and build the culture. That's the fabric of the baggy green, that's what you're passionate about, and I'm not seeing some of that at the moment and I'm disappointed.”