Pakistan Cricket Chaos: Jason Gillespie's Critique of Aaqib Javed
The fallout from Pakistan’s wretched start to the Test series in England is turning uglier by the day. Results have been bad. The response off the field has been worse.
After two heavy defeats to the Three Lions, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) swung the axe, sending seven players and two coaches home mid-tour and handing the Test reins to white-ball coach Mike Hesson. The move has stunned former players and coaches. One of them, Jason Gillespie, is no longer holding back.
The former Pakistan Test coach has launched a stinging attack on chairman of selectors Aaqib Javed, accusing him of chaos, blame-shifting and a complete absence of strategy.
“Look in the mirror”
Earlier this week, the PCB told Mohammad Rizwan, Imam-ul-Haq, Salman Ali Agha, Sarfaraz Ahmed and Umar Gul their tours were over. Seven replacements were drafted in as Pakistan scrambled to arrest a series already spiralling out of control.
From afar, Gillespie sees a dressing room paralysed.
“I feel for the players, this is these guys’ livelihoods. From the outside, it looks like they are playing with fear,” he told Code Sports.
He pointed to Salman Ali Agha as the starkest example of the turmoil. Salman 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, the question hanging over the entire selection policy.
The Australian, who coached Pakistan’s Test side in a previous stint, made it clear where he believes the rot starts.
“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.
A feud in full view
Javed, a former Pakistan fast bowler and now both chairman of selectors and director of high performance, has publicly criticised Gillespie and fellow former coach Gary Kirsten, claiming there was no communication and that the pair ignored him.
Gillespie has repeatedly rejected that version of events. This time, he went further, accusing Javed of rewriting history to deflect from his own record.
“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,” Gillespie said. “I think Javed needs to look at himself in the mirror.”
The criticism did not stop at strategy. It cut into the basic way Pakistan’s players are being treated.
According to Gillespie, some of those dropped only discovered their fate second-hand.
“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,” he said.
For an already fragile squad, that kind of uncertainty is corrosive. Fear replaces clarity. Whispers replace honest conversations.
England tour unravels
On the field, the numbers tell their own brutal story. Pakistan were crushed by an innings and 103 runs in the series opener at Headingley. At Lord’s, the gap widened again, this time a 194-run defeat.
Those margins reflect more than technical flaws. They speak to a side unmoored, stripped of confidence and now stripped of several senior figures mid-series.
The PCB’s response was to rip up the touring party and install Hesson, the white-ball coach, in charge of the Test side. Seven new players have been summoned to salvage something from a tour that has already exposed deep structural fault lines.
All of it has left Pakistan cricket once again in the familiar territory of public blame games and internal power struggles, played out while the team is still on foreign soil.
Edgbaston awaits
The third and final Test at Edgbaston, starting September 9, now looms as more than a dead rubber. It is a test of authority, of direction, of whether anyone inside Pakistan’s setup can steady a ship listing badly in full view of the cricketing world.
The scoreboard in Birmingham will show runs and wickets. The real question is whether it will show any sign of order in a system being accused, from within and without, of tearing itself apart.
