It’s official: Kirsten, Gillespie to be head coaches

LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Sunday announced that it has hired the services of former South African left-handed opener Gary Kirsten as Pakistan’s white-ball head coach and former Australian pacer Jason Gillespie as the country’s red-ball head coach.

Former Pakistan bowling all-rounder Azhar Mehmood, who recently served Pakistan as head coach during the New Zealand series, has been named as an assistant coach across all formats.

The services of these coaches have been taken for two years. Kirsten, who will handle Pakistan’s side during the forthcoming ICC T20 World Cup, will join the Green-shirts soon after completing his IPL’s stint.

Besides ICC Men’s T20 World Cup and other bilateral white-ball series, Kirsten will also coach Pakistan in the ICC Champions Trophy 2025, ACC T20 Asia Cup 2025 and the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 in India and Sri Lanka.

Gillespie on the other hand will join as Pakistan’s head coach for the ICC World Test Championship fixtures against Bangladesh at home in August. This was formally announced by the PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi at a news conference here at the Gaddafi Stadium. Also present were the PCB Chief Operating Officer (COO) Salman Naseer and Azhar Mehmood.

“Both Kirsten and Gillespie are renowned coaches which shows how they and international community trust our national team. It shows how potentially glorious our team is and definitely how to use this potential and how to play like a unit,” Naqvi said.

“You saw yesterday how the team won and definitely when there are problems in the team then we face issues,” said Naqvi, also the federal interior minister. “And after these coaches Azhar Mehmood has been hired for these formats as an assistant coach. I will appreciate Azhar as he was well-settled in UK, his family is still in UK but he left behind the best offers for the sake of the country. Nation should know that Azhar purely has come for Pakistan and I firmly believe that he will play his role and he will be a bridge between Test cricket and whiteball cricket and he recently lifted the team from lows to a better position. InshaAllah we will do better,” Naqvi said.

“The basic purpose behind bringing in these coaches is to get the best out of the players,” he was quick to add. To a question Naqvi said that Pakistani players’ fitness is low as compared to the players of the rest of the world. “If I have to bring in practitioners for fitness from abroad I will also do that. Such injuries cannot occuer due to fitness training,” Naqvi said. Azhar added to this saying that injuries to some of Pakistani players happened not because of the Kakul training. “Kakul training had nothing to do with cricket, it was fitness’ training. Players got injured during the game. Had they been injured we would not have given them chance in the first game. Azam Khan was also injured during net practice.” Azhar said.

Naqvi said that they will also use Gillespie in the domestic structure and they also plan to revamp cricket academies. “We will also utilise our own players,” he said. “The government and the PCB both are stable. I have given powers to the selection committee. We have brought foreign coaches in order to get the best out of the team. As far as language barrier is concerned so Azhar is there and if anyone does not know English he will learn,” Naqvi said.