After Justin Langer quit as Australian Cricket Coach in February, former fast-bowler Simon O'Donnell says standards amongst the team have slid.
Langer's departure came after serving four years from 2018, including leading the team to Ashes glory last year and retaining the urn on English soil in 2019 for the first time since 2001.
Nine months on, former Victorian all-rounder and now head coach Andrew McDonald is now in charge and a "shift in power" has led to a decline in standards amongst the group, according to O'Donnell.
Speaking on SEN Breakfast, O'Donnell says the changing of player power is one of the reasons for the change.
"Leadership via negotiation never works, I don't 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," he said.
"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.
"They were very happy then for the new coach Andrew McDonald to come in, they felt that was the best way to go.
"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."
O'Donnell believes players began to construct their own ways of being in charge instead of listening to Langer, known to have exceptionally high standards.
"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," he added.
"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.
"Now the summer will tell us where it's at... we need a holistic look at what's going on, we need the canvas to be painted be the end of summer to see where we're at."
With Australia needing to secure a win in it's final group game of the T20 World Cup against Afghanistan on Friday and bank on Ireland and Sri Lanka defeating New Zealand and England respectively, O'Donnell says it's time to throw caution to the wind.
"Quite right (we've only lost one game), but I'll tell you what we haven't been, we haven't been on our game for a World Cup," he said.
"We've been talking the World Cup 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.
"We've played without grasping the emotional side of the World Cup and blasting off with it.
"Our captain has been in questionable form, Steve Smith, is he in, is he out, there's a bit of a changing of the guard going on as well, so I want to sit back and have a look.
"Just 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.
"If you're not doing everything at 100 per cent, you're just at 98, eventually that will tell, you won't play the role you should be playing, and things will start to crumble."
