Sept 4 (Reuters) – Former Pakistan coach Jason \u2060Gillespie said the team’s latest upheaval reflected a lack of stability off the field, after \u2060the Pakistan Cricket Board overhauled the squad and coaching staff midway through the test series \u200cagainst England.<\/p>\n
Pakistan sent home seven players, including former captain Salman Ali Agha, and parted ways with head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and bowling coach Umar Gul after heavy defeats in the opening two tests.<\/p>\n
Pakistan lost the first test by an innings and 103 runs \u200band the second by 194 runs to go 2-0 down in \u2060the three-match series, failing to score more \u2060than 200 in all four innings.<\/p>\n
Gillespie, who coached Pakistan from April to December 2024, said constant changes \u2060had \u200cmade it difficult for the team to build consistency.<\/p>\n
“I feel for the players \u2014 this is these guys’ livelihoods,” Gillespie told The Australian newspaper.<\/p>\n
“From the outside it looks like they are playing with \u2060fear. Salman Ali Agha goes from captaining the team in the \u200bfirst test against England, to \u200cbeing out of the team for the second test and on the plane home before \u2060the third test. How \u200bdoes that work?<\/p>\n
“If you want consistency on the field there needs to be consistency off the field. That goes to board level, selection and coaching level.”<\/p>\n
Pakistan have had six test coaches in the past three years, with former Australia \u2060fast bowler Gillespie among them.<\/p>\n
Pakistan have won one of their \u200blast eight test series since August 2024, a run that includes a 2-1 victory over England under Gillespie.<\/p>\n
“Aaqib Javed (Director High-Performance, Pakistan Cricket Board) came out recently and blamed (former Pakistan white-ball coach) Gary Kirsten and myself for \u2060everything that is going on. Aaqib has been chairman of selectors for the past two years. We haven’t even been there,” Gillespie said.<\/p>\n
“Somehow he claims it is our fault. Make sense out of that. I think Javed needs to look at himself in the mirror.”<\/p>\n
Reuters has contacted the Pakistan Cricket Board for comment.<\/p>\n
Gillespie \u200bwas also critical of how some players learned of their omissions.<\/p>\n
“The players \u2060who were sacked heard it through family and friends and the media,” he said. “How disrespectful is that?”<\/p>\n
Despite his \u200bcriticism, Gillespie said he remained a strong admirer of Pakistan’s players.<\/p>\n
“The \u200ctalent there is as good as anywhere in the \u200bworld,” he added. “These players just need support off the field.”<\/p>\n
Pakistan face England in the third and final test from September 9 to 13.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Suramya Kaushik in BengaluruEditing by Christian Radnedge)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sept 4 (Reuters) – Former Pakistan coach Jason \u2060Gillespie said the team’s latest upheaval reflected a lack of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879643,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,6675,85],"class_list":["post-879642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-na","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}