Jason Gillespie Criticizes Aaqib Javed Over Pakistan's Test Chaos
Jason Gillespie has launched a stinging attack on Pakistan chief selector Aaqib Javed, branding the country’s mid-series cull “disrespectful” and accusing the selection panel of operating without any clear strategy.
Pakistan’s Test tour of England has already unravelled on the field. Now the fallout off it is threatening to overshadow even those heavy defeats.
After innings and 103-run humiliation at Headingley and a 194-run loss at Lord’s, Pakistan trail 2-0 in the three-match series. The response from the Pakistan Cricket Board was brutal: seven players sent home, the head coach and bowling coach removed, and an entirely new backroom team drafted in for the third Test in Birmingham on September 9.
For Gillespie, who spent eight months in charge of Pakistan in 2024 and oversaw a 2-1 Test series win over England, the spectacle has been agonising.
“I feel for the players, this is these guys livelihoods,” he told The Australian. “From the outside it looks like they are playing with fear.”
That fear, he believes, is being driven from the top.
“They change their mind like they change their pants”
Gillespie reserved his sharpest criticism for Aaqib Javed, the PCB’s chairman of selectors, accusing him of erratic decision-making and a complete lack of consistency.
“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,” the former Australia fast bowler said.
Nothing summed up the chaos better, in Gillespie’s eyes, than the treatment of Salman Ali Agha.
“Salman Ali Agha goes from captaining the team in the first Test against England to out of the team for the second Test and on the plane home before the third Test. How does that work?”
The overhaul was sweeping. Wicketkeeper Mohammad Rizwan, opener Imam-ul-Haq, Salman Ali Agha, spinner Ali Usman, pacer Khurram Shahzad, all-rounder Aamir Jamal and batter Awais Zafar were all recalled to the squad. At the same time, Sarfaraz Ahmed was removed as head coach and Umar Gul as bowling coach, with Mike Hesson and Ashley Noffke brought in to take charge for the Birmingham Test.
On paper, it looks like a reset. To Gillespie, it looks like panic.
“Make sense out of that”
The tension between Gillespie and Aaqib has been simmering. It boiled over when the selector recently tried to pin Pakistan’s current woes on Gillespie and former white-ball coach Gary Kirsten.
“Aaqib Javed came out recently and blamed (former Pakistan white-ball coach) Gary Kirsten and myself for everything that is going on,” Gillespie said.
“Aaqib has been 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. I think Javed needs to look at himself in the mirror.”
The accusation is clear: this is not a legacy problem, it is a leadership problem.
Players finding out through social media
If the selection logic infuriated Gillespie, the manner in which it was handled disgusted him.
“There is definitely no communication between Aaqib Javed, who is meant to be chairman of selectors, and the players,” he said.
“The players who were sacked heard it through family and friends and the media they had been sacked. How disrespectful is that?”
Reports this week backed up that claim, stating that several players only discovered they had been dropped when friends and relatives forwarded them the PCB’s official statement on social media. There was no direct call from the captain, no message from the coach, no explanation from the selector in charge of their careers.
For an international side already reeling from two heavy defeats, that kind of treatment cuts deep. It erodes trust. It feeds the very “fear” Gillespie says he can see from afar.
Birmingham awaits – but what kind of Pakistan turns up?
So Pakistan head to Birmingham with a new coaching duo in Mike Hesson and Ashley Noffke, a reshaped squad, and a mountain of noise swirling around them.
England already have the series in their pocket. Pakistan, though, have something far more fragile to salvage: their dressing-room belief and their sense of direction.
The scoreboard tells one story. The way this team has been handled tells another. Which one will define Pakistan’s season?
