Pakistan Cricket Faces Major Overhaul After England Series Loss
Pakistan cricket is not just losing a Test series in England. It is being torn up and rewritten in real time.
Two heavy defeats – an innings and 103 runs at Headingley, then a 194-run beating at Lord’s – have handed England a 2-0 lead and the series with a match to spare. For Pakistan, the response has been brutal. And decisive.
Coaching clear-out, dressing-room shake-up
Before the third Test at Edgbaston has even begun, the Pakistan Cricket Board has started dismantling the old order.
Sarfaraz Ahmed and Umar Gul are out of the coaching setup. Mike Hesson has been brought in to take charge, with former Australia seamer Ashley Noffke alongside him as assistant. That alone would signal a shift. The PCB has gone further.
Seven players have been removed from the squad for the final Test, a cull that includes senior figures Mohammad Rizwan, Imam-ul-Haq and Salman Ali Agha. Experience has been pushed aside in favour of a younger, hungrier group, a clear sign that the board is no longer treating this as a routine away series but as the launchpad for a full-scale rebuild.
The message is stark: this is no longer about saving the tour. It is about starting again.
Shoaib Akhtar: ‘They don’t expect anything from this squad’
Shoaib Akhtar has watched all this unfold and sees a board that has lost faith in a generation.
Speaking on the OutSide EDGE show, the former fast bowler laid bare what he believes is driving the upheaval.
“The PCB itself was very disappointed by these people, and they don’t expect anything from this Pakistan squad. The plan is to remove this squad and replace them with younger and newer blood. Players who just want to play for Pakistan. They are looking at the future now, and they are working at it in the right way,” Akhtar said.
It is a ruthless assessment, but it matches the scale of the changes. This is not tinkering after a bad tour. This is a reset.
Akhtar, though, sounded a warning. In the rush to rebuild, he does not want Pakistan to sacrifice its most precious assets.
“In this transition, I just want Shaheen Shah Afridi, Naseem Shah and Haris Rauf’s careers to be saved. These guys have a lot of cricket left in them,” he said.
Protect the pace, he is saying. Change everything else if you must, but do not burn out the three fast bowlers around whom any future Pakistan attack will surely be built.
‘Nothing’ expected from England tour
Akhtar’s criticism did not stop at the dressing room. He also lifted the lid on what he claims is the PCB’s internal view of this team and this tour.
He recounted a conversation with a board official in which he asked what expectations the PCB had from the side in England.
The answer, he said, was chilling in its bluntness.
“Nothing. We have expectations from the next generation of players that we are preparing for the big stage,” Akhtar quoted the official as saying.
From there, the picture grew even darker. According to Akhtar, the same official described Pakistan cricket as being “on a ventilator” and suggested it could take around two years to revive the national setup.
Those words frame the current crisis in harsh light. This is not just about two bad Tests in English conditions. It is about a system that, in the eyes of its own administrators, has been allowed to drift to the edge.
Work at the academy, no fight on the field
Akhtar visited the National Cricket Academy in Lahore during the second Test and found a different kind of upheaval.
“After 26 years, there is work being done at the academy now,” he said, pointing to long-overdue infrastructure upgrades as another sign that the PCB has finally accepted the need for structural change.
So while the senior team lurches from defeat to defeat, bulldozers and builders are busy back home, trying to lay the foundations for whatever comes next.
None of this, Akhtar insisted, should come as a surprise. Asked whether the turmoil had shocked him, he dismissed the idea.
“What is the shock there? Didn’t you expect that?” he replied.
His harshest words were reserved for the performances against England. Pakistan were not just outplayed; in his view, they were out-fought.
“We didn’t have the fight in us,” he said, summing up the two Tests in a single, damning line.
A dead rubber with live consequences
Pakistan now head to Edgbaston with the series already gone and the threat of a 3-0 whitewash looming. On paper, it is a dead rubber. In reality, it feels like the first audition for a new era.
The PCB’s decisions before the series has even ended make one thing clear: this is bigger than a tour, bigger than a scoreline in England. The real question now is not whether Pakistan can stop the sweep, but how quickly a team “on a ventilator” can learn to breathe on its own again.
