Cricket great Matthew Hayden questions culture of Australian team ahead of Pakistan tour 

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

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.’

Former Australian opening batsman Matt Hayden (pictured) says cricketers should receive a pay cut if they choose to not represent Australia in an international series