LAHORE: Having tested as many as six head coaches without any positive results in key international contests during the past two years for the national team, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has again advertised the post.
Additionally, the PCB has also advertised the position of director high performance centres on its website this week.
Aaqib Javed, the last interim head coach who failed to deliver after performing double duties as selector and coach during the past six months, left the job following this year’s ICC Champions Trophy held in February-March.
Pakistan during the past couple of years have nosedived in top-level international events, including the 2023 Asia Cup, 2023 ODI World Cup 2024 T20 World Cup and the Champions Trophy.
The PCB, during the last two years, functioned under Najam Sethi, Zaka Ashraf and (incumbent) Mohsin Naqvi — all of whom sought to bring in like-minded personnel as coaches, selectors and captain. No wonder the abrupt changes damaged Pakistan cricket above everything.
Abdul Rahman (interim head coach), Mohammad Hafeez (director national team), Azhar Mahmood (interim head coach), Jason Gillespie (Test head coach), Gary Kirsten (ODI head coach) and Aaqib (head coach of both white- and red-ball cricket) coached Pakistan teams during the last two years. Now the seventh coach is being sought by the PCB.
This time, however, the Board may find it hard to hire a competent foreign coach.
The PCB under different chairmen over the years has experienced complicated relations with various foreign coaches including Geoff Lawson (2007-08) and Mickey Arthur (2016-19) both of whom were sacked in controversial circumstances.
Late last year, the contentious resignations of Gillespie (April-December) and Kirsten (April-October) did not create a positive impression about PCB’s human resource management.
Since 2023, the PCB has made several changes in national team’s captaincy too.
While Sethi continued with Babar Azam as captain, Zaka replaced him after Pakistan team’s dismal show at the 50-over ICC World Cup, bringing in Shaheen Shah Afridi (white-ball captain) and Shan Masood (Tests).
The Mohsin-led PCB regime, since February 2024, has made wholesale changes. It first removed Shaheen as captain to bring back Babar as white-ball skipper in the first half of 2024. Later, Babar owing to the team’s poor performance in the T20 World Cup, decided to step down after which Mohammad Rizwan was given the reins of white-ball team. Shan, however, retained Test captaincy, despite an ordinary show as captain as well as batter.
Earlier this year, after another pathetic performance by Pakistan in the Champions Trophy staged at home, Rizwan was replaced as T20 captain with Salman Ali Agha.
In the meantime, numerous changes were also made to the national selection committee. Interestingly, instead of holding the selectors responsible for the team’s below-par performances many of them have been given new roles.
Since assuming the charge, Mohsin has done different experiments in order to lift the national team’s performance, but to no avail.
Earlier in this connection, former Test fast bowler Wahab Riaz had taken up different jobs after being appointed as chief selector by Zaka in 2023.
Mohsin included Wahab as a key member of a head-less seven-member selection committee. Interestingly, the ex-pacer was also given an additional newly created post of senior team manager — a newly-created position — of the national team which exited last year’s T20 World Cup in the first round.
Later, Wahab was removed both as selector and senior team manager but remained in the picture — now functioning as the director of mentors. Prominent stars of Pakistan cricket like Waqar Younis, Saqlain Mushtaq, Misbah-ul-Haq, Sarfaraz Ahmed and Shoaib Malik are working under Wahab.
Like Wahab, former batting maestro Mohammad Yousuf, another key figure of Pakistan cricket, has also been getting different roles without success. First, he was included as a member of the seven-member selection committee in March 2024 while he continued to act as the national U-19 team’s head coach too.
Next month, Yousuf was given the third role of batting coach too. In September 2024, Yousuf stepped down as selector but continued as head coach of the U-19 team.
On Oct 11, new selectors were included and they were Azhar Ali, Aaqib and Aleem Dar. Later, Azhar was removed to be head of youth development.
Aaqib, who had been working as a selector since October last year, got an additional job of national white-ball team’s interim head coach on Nov 18 in place of Kristen.
After being appointed as the Test team coach in place of Gillespie on Dec 12, Aaqib failed to lift the Pakistan team in any format and now sources said he was eyeing the post of director high performance, which fell vacant after Nadeem Khan resigned on March 31.
Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2025
