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‘I was the lowest-hanging fruit in Pakistan cricket’: South Africa great recounts horrible coaching ordeal with the PCB
A few weeks later, another great from Australia, Jason Gillespie, took the same call and left Pakistan cricket on a very bad note.
Some more terrible, damning stuff is coming Pakistan cricket’s way! For so many years now, they have been in the news for all the wrong reasons.
South Africa legend Gary Kirsten -- who also coached the World Cup-winning side India in 2011 -- has spilt the beans about the mess that Pakistan cricket has become.
Kirsten was appointed the white-ball coach of the Pakistani team in 2024, but he quit six months later in the same year. He had been given a two-year contract, but things got so bad that he had no other option but to quit his role. On talkSPORT, Kirsten, who was at the helm when Pakistan exited the 2024 T20 World Cup after the first round in the USA and the Caribbean, revealed what all he had to go through during his stint with the Pakistan Cricket Board.
"I think the thing that surprised me probably more than anything was, um, the level of interference. I don't think I've ever seen it at that level before. Did it surprise me? I don't know, but it was certainly significant. So, it's quite difficult for a coach to come and formulate a way that you can work with the players when there's just this constant noise from, you know, from the outside.
"Um, it was tough, just this constant noise from the outside and, you know, a lot of, um, punitive actions around poor performance and stuff like that. And, you know, as a coach, you're the lowest-hanging fruit when the team's not going well.
"So, you know, let's get rid of the coach or let's put a restriction on the coach, because that is the easiest thing to do when the teams are performing. And that's kind of counterproductive in my view, then why recruit the coach?" he said.
There was one more low-hanging fruit!
Kirsten was not the only victim of Pakistan's ineptness. A couple of months later in December 2024, Pakistan's Test coach at the time, Australian Jason Gillespie, had also quit his role, citing more or less the same reasons.
Later, he blamed Aaqib Javed, his successor, for all the murkiness after the hirings of Kirsten and himself.
"Aaqib was clearly undermining Gary and me behind the scenes, campaigning to be the coach in all formats. He is a clown," he said.
