Justin Langer has resigned as head coach of Australia's men's cricket team less than a month after a thumping Ashes series win.
It comes after a meeting with Cricket Australia officials last night.
A Cricket Australia (CA) statement said Langer was offered a short-term extension on his current contract but he refused to accept it.
"The contract extension offered to Justin was the result of a thorough review process that evaluated many factors including future requirements of the team and the upcoming extensive schedule of fixtures," the statement read.
"The extension was approved by the CA Board and was put to Justin last night. It included the opportunity to defend the T20 World Cup title in Australia at the end of this year.
"Justin informed CA this morning he was not accepting the offer and would resign with immediate effect."
Assistant coach Andrew McDonald will step into an interim head coach role.
Cricket Australia chief executive Nick Hockley praised Langer for what he had achieved during his four-year tenure as head coach.
"Justin has been an outstanding coach of the Australian men's team," Hockley said.
"He has restored the trust in the team and his legacy is assured.
"We are extremely proud of his achievements since he took over in 2018, including the recent T20 World Cup victory and Ashes success.
"I would like to sincerely thank Justin and also his family for all that they have given to Australian cricket over the past four years, for which we remain eternally grateful."
Langer has won 15 of 27 Tests as men's coach since taking charge in 2018 after the ball-tampering scandal in South Africa.
He recently coached the men's team to a 4-0 Ashes series victory, while Australia's men's T20 World Cup win last November was its first in the tournament's history.
But the Australians also recorded a Test series loss to India in the 2020-21 summer under his coaching, as well as white-ball series losses in West Indies and Bangladesh last year.
'It's a really sad day,' Ponting says
Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting said it was "almost embarrassing" the way Cricket Australia handled the ousting of then-Test captain Tim Paine just before the Ashes, and now Langer.
"[It] sounds like he mustn't have had the full backing of the board," Ponting told ABC radio Melbourne.
"He was very keen to continue on in the role, as he should've been, having just won a T20 World Cup and the 4-0 result in the Ashes.
"And that's been enough to force a man that's put his life, heart and soul into Australian cricket and done what I believe is a sensational job in turning around the culture and the way the Australian cricket team has been looked at over the last three or four years. It's been enough to push him out of his dream job.
"It's a really sad day as far as Australian cricket's concerned."
Ponting said he was disappointed that current Australia Test captain Pat Cummins had repeatedly refused to publicly back his coach, although he admitted, as someone who understands the pressure of leading the country's men's cricket team, that Cummins was in an awkward position.
"Pat's been put in a pretty difficult situation as captain. If it's not just him, if there are other players that are coming to him to let him know that they feel Justin's not the right man, then I think that puts Pat in a difficult position," Ponting said.
"I might have got asked an opinion here or there on a certain coach, but it seems like the players and, maybe, a couple of other personnel around the Australian cricket team might have influenced Cricket Australia into making the decision that they have."
Ponting said McDonald and former England coach Trevor Bayliss were the names he had heard thrown up as potential replacements for Langer.
Much of the discussion has been around whether one coach for Test, Twenty20 and one-day internationals is the best approach, but Ponting said he did not believe splitting the roles was a good idea.
"[As a player] I'd want the same coach. I'd want to be hearing similar messages day in and day out. The most important thing is the relationship between the player and the coach and, if you start putting two or three people in those roles, I think there can be a lot more confusion there than there needs to be."
Langer, according to friend and former teammate Ponting, has not returned to Perth to see his family since September, with COVID-19 restrictions further separating players and staff from their loved ones and raising the pressure on the team.
Ponting said Cricket Australia, in his decades in the game, had a track record of what should be internal disputes leaking out into the public domain.
"There's so many of these incidents," he said.
"The general public would sit back and say, 'What on earth are they doing here? Why are they handling these situations like they are?'"
