Pakistan’s chaotic Test tour of England has claimed its first major casualties — and sparked an angry response from within its own ranks.
Leg-spinner Usama Mir, overlooked on this trip but very much part of the national conversation, took to X with a pointed, thinly veiled attack on the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and team management after sweeping changes were announced in the wake of back-to-back defeats at Headingley and Lord's.
“Amazing how someone managed to destroy the entire system, and nobody even noticed,” Mir wrote, without naming names but leaving little doubt about the target of his frustration.
He followed it up with a cutting Urdu proverb: “Ab pachhtaye kya, jab chidiya chug gayin khet (It is no use crying over spilt milk).”
In a country where players rarely speak openly against the establishment, those two lines landed like a bouncer aimed at the helmet. The timing was no coincidence.
Series lost, heads roll
Pakistan have already surrendered the three-match series 2-0, with only the final Test in Birmingham left, starting September 9. The response from the PCB has been drastic.
Head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and bowling coach Umar Gul have been sent home mid-tour. In their place, white-ball head coach Mike Hesson and bowling coach Ashley Noffke have been drafted in to oversee the final Test.
The clear message: the board has seen enough.
The shake-up has not stopped at the dressing-room door. Seven players have also been recalled from the tour, ripping up the squad just days before the last Test.
- Wicketkeeper Mohammad Rizwan
- Injured opener Imam-ul-Haq
- First Test captain Salman Ali Agha
- Spinner Ali Usman
- Pacer Khurram Shahzad
- All-rounder Aamir Jamal
- Batter Awais Zafar
It is a brutal cull, even by Pakistan’s volatile standards.
Sarfaraz’s short reign ends in ruins
For Sarfaraz Ahmed, the end has come quickly and ruthlessly.
His three-month stint as head coach closes with a grim statistic: Pakistan lost five of six away Tests under his watch. Two defeats in Bangladesh, one in the West Indies, and now two in England have underlined how far the side has fallen on foreign soil.
The lone bright spot was a drawn series in the West Indies, 1-1 under Babar Azam’s captaincy. It never turned into a revival.
Sarfaraz, once the street-fighting captain who led Pakistan to Champions Trophy glory, leaves this role with his reputation as a coach bruised by results he simply could not turn around.
Babar’s second coming under pressure
If the PCB hoped Babar Azam’s return as Test captain would steady the ship after Shan Masood’s removal in May, the numbers tell a harsher story.
Babar’s second spell has not shifted Pakistan’s trajectory. The drawn series in the West Indies offered a hint of stability, but the twin defeats in England have reopened every old wound about their away-game frailties.
The wider record is damning: Pakistan have now lost 10 of their last 11 away Tests.
That is not a blip. That is a pattern.
A system under fire
This is the context in which Usama Mir’s words cut so deep.
He did not mention the PCB. He did not name a coach, a selector, or an official. He did not need to. “Amazing how someone managed to destroy the entire system,” he wrote, capturing in one line the simmering belief that the problems run far beyond one series loss or one failed coaching stint.
His follow-up — “It is no use crying over spilt milk” — reads less like a throwaway proverb and more like a verdict: the damage has already been done, and the current panic is too late.
As Hesson and Noffke step into a dressing room shaken by sackings and sudden departures, Pakistan head to Birmingham not just chasing a consolation win, but searching for something more elusive: proof that there is still a functioning structure behind the badge, and not just a system Mir believes has already been “destroyed.”
