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Former New Zealand cricket captain Martin Crowe agrees with Stephen Fleming's decision to step down as one-day skipper, and believes coach John Bracewell should now resign.
In the wake of New Zealand's disappointing 81-run loss to Sri Lanka in the World Cup semifinal match at Kingston today, Crowe said it was time for change at all levels of the game.
He wasn't surprised at Fleming's announcement after 218 games as one-day captain.
"It was probably time after 10 years, it's interesting it's just the one-day game," Crowe told Radio Sport.
"He realises it's time for a change of the guard. We're seeing that with the new CEO coming in (Justin Vaughan for Martin Snedden) and we might see that with the coach."
The majority of coaches at the World Cup are stepping down from their role and Crowe said Bracewell should follow suit.
"All of those coaches have had three or four years, as has John Bracewell, and that's about the right sort of term for a coach.
"You need to move on to fresh ideas because the game is moving on very quickly.
"It would probably be common sense that that be the case."
Crowe described former New Zealand opening batsmen and recent coach of India John Wright as an "obvious candidate" to take over.
Even though New Zealand reached the semifinals -- as the team Crowe led in the 1992 World Cup managed to do -- he believed the Black Caps had under-performed in the West Indies and wasn't surprised to see them go down so heavily.
"It was an easy ride into the semis, we were never put under any pressure," Crowe said.
"There was a lot of talking in between games but I felt nervous going into the game because I didn't feel there were a lot of players in form.
"Coming off that Australian debacle (record 215-run loss last week), I felt we were going to have to be very lucky."
Crowe was also disappointed the New Zealand players didn't seem to be hard hit by the nature of that defeat. They all spoke of how it hadn't knocked their confidence.
"They fall into doing the same PR speak and putting a positive spin on things.
"But the Australian game was diabolical and that was such a crucial match."
The buildup to the Australian match was where New Zealand's campaign began to unravel, Crowe believed, with pace bowler Shane Bond sidelined from it because he fell sick the night before.
"What are you doing eating a dodgy fish curry that's going to take you out of the game the next day?" he questioned.
"They needed Bond there, they needed Jacob Oram there. I don't care about (Oram's) bruised heel when you've got seven or eight days to play, you get out there and play what are going to be the three most important games of your career.
"They didn't front up, they backed out and they just said 'we had our eye on the Sri Lankan game'.
"Well they didn't have their eye on that because as we've seen today, they just didn't perform as well as this well-groomed Sri Lankan side."
- NZPA
