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"You shouldn't be able to cherry-pick when you want to play for Australia" : Matthew Hayden

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"You shouldn't be able to cherry-pick when you want to play for Australia" : Matthew Hayden

A cricket legend has blasted current Australian stars as he unleashed an extraordinary attack of the team's culture.

Former Aussie opening batsman Matt Hayden has questioned players' influence on the Cricket Australia board and accused them of 'cherry-picking' the games they wish to play as the fallout from the recent resignation of national coach Justin Langer continues.

Cricket Australia unveiled its squad for the upcoming tour of Pakistan this week, where four of its biggest stars will be 'rested' from shorter forms of the game following a three Test series.

Australian Test captain Pat Cummins, David Warner, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood are among noticeable omissions from the one day and T20 squads for matches scheduled later in the tour.

Hayden blasted the snub by players as a concern for the high-performance set-up.

He went as far as claiming Cricket Australia was led around by its stars, just five years after he called for players to have more influence.

'I just don't reckon it passes the pub test. The single biggest thing which ties everything together at that level is that you are all really keen to play for your country and if you haven't got that, I actually question whether you have a high performance culture at all,' Hayden told News Corp.

'It just makes it so hard to build all the things you are trying to have like team values, principles, giving a s*** about your mates.'

Australia's one day matches against Pakistan clash with the start of next month's Indian Premier League.

But Australian players are not allowed to take part in the lucrative T20 series until their CA annual leave period until two weeks later.

Australian stars Mitchell Starc, David Warner and Test captain Pat Cummins will miss the rest of Pakistan tour once the three Test series is done

Hayden has called for cricketers to receive a pay cut if they choose to not represent Australia in an international series.

'You shouldn't be able to cherry-pick when you want to play for Australia. It doesn't make any sense to me,' he said.

'If you are unavailable to play for Australia there has to be some accountability. You shouldn't be paid for work you don't do

Hayden held contrasting views five years ago when he called on cricketers to have more influence on decision-making.

'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,' he told Triple M in 2016.

'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.'

Australian cricketers (pictured celebrating their recent Ashes series win) have come under fire following the recent resignation of coach Justin Langer
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Australian cricketers (pictured celebrating their recent Ashes series win) have come under fire following the recent resignation of coach Justin Langer

Hayden was among a host of cricket greats who slammed current players following Langer's highly publicised departure following Australia's T20 World Cup win and a 4-0 Ashes series win against England.

An emotional Hayden leapt to the defence of his former long-time opening batting partner, claiming Langer had been let down by the players for the last 12 months.

'If he was waiting for the current Australian cricket team to be presenting a face of care, I dare say they won't be and that's, to me, the real sadness around this,' he told ABC last month.

'This was a bloke (Langer) that won the Ashes, stayed back basically in Melbourne for the entire time while this dragged on for a month … the whole thing just reeks of being orchestrated from basically the moment all of this garbage started coming out in the middle of last year.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ture-Australian-team-ahead-Pakistan-tour.html
 
Spoken from the heart and reflects a growing concern on this issue.
 
Australia resting some of their stars for white ball series to test depth is nothing new. In this case it seems though that the players themselves have made themselves unavailable for selection to stay fresh for the IPL.

Agree with Hayden about the pay cut. If they’re making themselves unavailable for selection outside of the annual leave period then they should be on leave without pay.
 
Great sentiments, probably in part influenced by his positive stint in the Pakistan dressing room.

Everyone knows the issue is IPL but when you have that much money involved in essentially blackmailing boards and players to take the short term option over the long term health of the game then nothing will change.
 
Australia resting some of their stars for white ball series to test depth is nothing new. In this case it seems though that the players themselves have made themselves unavailable for selection to stay fresh for the IPL.

Agree with Hayden about the pay cut. If they’re making themselves unavailable for selection outside of the annual leave period then they should be on leave without pay.

Those players don’t rest when they are facing India or England
 
I agree with Hayden.

If you are a contracted player, you should be always available (like any other job).
 
IPL or no IPL.
No contracted player should get full salary if he skips national duty for any reason except injury.
Some valid cases like demise of any family member, paternal leave etc. can be added to exception list.
 
All i care about is we tank these arrogant Aussies. It is up to them if they play a weaker side for the sake of the IPL.
 
All i care about is we tank these arrogant Aussies. It is up to them if they play a weaker side for the sake of the IPL.

The business and marketing value of the game takes a significant hit when megastars opt out.

PCB well and truly deserves to make a fair cut of revenue from the LOI series which is more lucrative than the test match series.
 
The business and marketing value of the game takes a significant hit when megastars opt out.

PCB well and truly deserves to make a fair cut of revenue from the LOI series which is more lucrative than the test match series.

That may be so however Pak has no control over the IPL being played simultaneously as our Test series vs the Aussies. All we can do is defeat our opponents.
 
Matty Hayden seems to have become very pro Pak after coaching our boys at the T20 World Cup. He has been making good noise over his wonderful experience with the Pak side. This is the kind of publicity we need.
 
Those players don’t rest when they are facing India or England

We actually rotate players against India too.

This is the bowling list from our last ODI in India---

Hazlewood, Abbot, Green, Agar, Zampa, Henriques.

Pretty similar to the team about to face Pakistan yes? Hazlewood is rested + Stoinis has replaced Henriques as our #1 allrounder. Kane Richardson replaces Hazlewood, which is a format consideration in a condensed tour, with Richardson generally in our T20i team as a bowler.

This is the top 6 batting from the same game-
Finch, Labu, Smith, Henriques, Green, Carey...

Apart from Stoinis in for Henriques, I don't see much difference to the team that faced India in India...
 
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the elephant in the room is the odi format, its not important enough to risk getting injured, and its not short enough to have a low physical impact.

the sooner international cricket is limited to tests, and tournament LOIs the better, stop this charade and minimise cherry picking.
 
the elephant in the room is the odi format, its not important enough to risk getting injured, and its not short enough to have a low physical impact.

the sooner international cricket is limited to tests, and tournament LOIs the better, stop this charade and minimise cherry picking.

Honestly think tests should be only regular international format going forward with ODIs and T20 series only being in the 6-8 months leading to a WC.
 
We actually rotate players against India too.

This is the bowling list from our last ODI in India---

Hazlewood, Abbot, Green, Agar, Zampa, Henriques.

Pretty similar to the team about to face Pakistan yes? Hazlewood is rested + Stoinis has replaced Henriques as our #1 allrounder. Kane Richardson replaces Hazlewood, which is a format consideration in a condensed tour, with Richardson generally in our T20i team as a bowler.

This is the top 6 batting from the same game-
Finch, Labu, Smith, Henriques, Green, Carey...

Apart from Stoinis in for Henriques, I don't see much difference to the team that faced India in India...

Let’s not forget the home ODI series in 2016 where Gurinder Sandhu of all people got a couple of games
 
Those players don’t rest when they are facing India or England

They do rest against those teams as well....go and check Aus bowling attack in T20s when India toured them last year.

Aussies just don't care about bilateral white ball cricket
 
Honestly think tests should be only regular international format going forward with ODIs and T20 series only being in the 6-8 months leading to a WC.

Then how do you propose the non Big3 boards make their money? Because, these boards spend more hosting a test than what they take in.

Tests are a money losing proposition for these boards. Don't be fooled by the posts on this forum. Test cricket fans in non Big3 are the small minority. There is no money to be made by the non Big3 boards.
 
Langer was the last Aussie 0G who had access to Australian Team's dressing room now all there 0G Aussie players have no access hence you see them all coming out at Cummins & frens. Langer wasn't a likeable Coach anyway and he had less influence for T20 WC win it was mainly Mcdonalds.
 
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