The fallout from Pakistan’s disastrous start to the Test series in England has moved from the dressing room to open warfare in the public arena.
With seven players and two coaches abruptly sent home after heavy defeats at Headingley and Lord’s, the Pakistan Cricket Board’s drastic reset has triggered a wave of anger from former players. At the centre of the storm stands chairman of selectors Aaqib Javed. And on Friday, former Pakistan Test coach Jason Gillespie went straight for him.
No soft jabs. Just a straight right.
“I feel for the players, this is these guys livelihoods. From the outside, it looks like they are playing with fear,” Gillespie told Code Sports, laying bare the human cost of the board’s decision.
The context is brutal. After an innings-and-103-run thrashing in the series opener at Headingley and a 194-run defeat at Lord’s, the PCB reacted by cutting deep. Mohammad Rizwan, Imam-ul-Haq, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed and Umar Gul were among those given their marching orders earlier in the week. Seven replacements were drafted in, and white-ball coach Mike Hesson was handed the Test reins.
For Gillespie, the way those changes were made speaks to a deeper rot.
He pointed to Salman Ali Agha as the emblem of the chaos. The all-rounder captained Pakistan in the first Test against England. By the second, he was out of the side. Before the third, he was on a flight home.
“How does that work?” Gillespie asked. It was less a question than an accusation.
In his view, the answer lies with Aaqib Javed.
Gillespie did not bother dressing it up. “It's pretty clear they don't have a selection strategy at all, particularly under Aaqib Javed. They change their mind like they change their pants -- daily,” he said, cutting into the heart of Pakistan’s planning, or lack of it.
The pressure has been building for days. Aaqib, a former Pakistan pacer and now both chairman of selectors and director of high performance, has publicly criticised Gillespie and Gary Kirsten, claiming there was no communication and that the pair did not listen to him during their time with Pakistan.
Gillespie has pushed back every time. This time, he went further.
“Aaqib Javed came out recently and blamed Gary Kirsten and myself for everything that is going on. Aaqib has been the chairman of selectors for the past two years. We haven't even been there. Somehow, he claims it is our fault. Make sense out of that. I think Javed needs to look at himself in the mirror,” he said.
The former coach then turned to what might be the most damning charge of all in modern professional sport: a breakdown of basic communication.
“There is definitely no communication between Aaqib Javed, who is meant to be chairman of selectors, and the players. The players who were sacked heard it through family and friends and the media that they had been sacked,” Gillespie added.
For any elite team, that would be unacceptable. For a side already accused by its own ex-coach of “playing with fear”, it is toxic.
This is not an isolated critique. Earlier in the week, Nasser Hussain also lashed out at the PCB, accusing the board of turning a bad situation into a farce and making Pakistan “a laughingstock” with its handling of the crisis. The chorus is growing, and the theme is consistent: muddled thinking at the top, confusion and anxiety below.
All of it hangs over a Pakistan side that now has to walk into Edgbaston on September 9 for the third and final Test, already 2-0 down, stripped of senior figures and led by a white-ball specialist coach parachuted into the red-ball role.
The scoreboard tells one story. The dressing-room politics tell another. The question now is not just how Pakistan respond on the field, but who, if anyone, is really in control of this team.
