Australian bowling legend Dennis Lillee has ended his 15-year coaching stint with the Australian cricket academy after rejecting "a pay cut, a reduced workload and a reshaped role".
According to a report in Tuesday's Daily Telegraph , Lillee was unhappy with a new proposal from the Centre of Excellence.
In a strongly-worded letter he said he did not like the new role that was given to him, which required him to work with Test players rather than upcoming youngsters.
"A proposal was put to me by the cricket academy (the Centre of Excellence) to cut my days down from 30 to 15 per year. They also didn't want me to do the states, so I would have no contact with the ones who really need the help, the under-17s and under-19s," he said in the letter.
"They wanted me to focus on the academy and the Test players and wanted to cut (my work) down to about half the days and for me to take a discount on my daily rate.
"I wrote to them and said 'nothing goes down' and I am not at all happy. But life moves on and I have got plenty to do," he wrote.
"I'm disappointed from the point of view that I felt the work I was doing there was bearing fruit. I loved what I did there," Lillee said of the fall-out.
Lillee is also associated with the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai, where he works in the capacity of director.
Centre of Excellence chief Trevor Robertson said while Lillee's decision was terribly disappointing they had not shut the door on anything.
"We hope we don't lose such an important resource. It has been an exhaustive process and we have left discussions open. The offer was not what Dennis wanted but it was still a good one made within our budget.
"We wanted to change Dennis' role but we could not come to a commercial arrangement and he wasn't able to accept our offer," said Robertson.
Lillee's duties are now expected to be fulfilled by former Test swing bowler Damien Fleming, who shared the duties with Lillee last summer and is regarded as one of Australia's most promising coaches, the newspaper reported.
