Pakistan Cricket Faces Crisis Amid England Defeats
In the space of a few grim weeks in England, Pakistan’s Test side managed to turn long-standing worries into a full-blown crisis. They folded meekly in a heavy defeat, never really landing a punch, and the Pakistan Cricket Board reacted with the subtlety of a fire alarm.
Seven players were ordered home midway through the tour. Senior members of the backroom staff followed, among them former captain Sarfaraz Ahmed and bowling coach Umar Gul. It was not a tweak. It was a clear-out.
Amid the noise, PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi stepped forward to insist that, while Pakistan cricket is hurting, it is far from broken.
Naqvi hits back: “Has cricket ended there as well?”
Naqvi has faced a barrage of criticism since those limp performances in England, but he pushed back, arguing that shock results are part of the modern game, not a uniquely Pakistani failing.
“Let me ask you one thing: South Africa lost to Namibia, and India lost to Ireland. Has cricket ended there as well?” Naqvi said in a video that has been circulating widely on social media.
His point was blunt. Big teams can be ambushed. One bad day does not mean the sport, or a nation’s cricket structure, has collapsed. What matters, he stressed, is the response.
“Yes, one thing is important: whoever we need here, we will definitely bring in. If someone is not clicking or not performing, then what can we do? Every match and every series is important for us.”
That last line reveals the current mood inside Pakistan cricket: no game is being treated as expendable, and no player as untouchable.
Agha Salman under the spotlight
One of the most pointed questions around selection has centred on Salman Agha. Once viewed as a key piece in Pakistan’s middle order, he has struggled badly for rhythm in recent outings.
Naqvi was keen to show that the board had not simply discarded him.
“Agha is such a brilliant player, and yet he is not clicking at the moment for certain reasons. We are not telling him, ‘We asked you to go and rest’; we spoke to him and did everything. So, the objective is not to remove someone from the team. The objective is that if a player is not clicking, then we should make a change,” he said.
It is a ruthless line, but a clear one. Reputation will not shield anyone. If form deserts you, the axe is close.
“Look at what the rankings were before”
The Test defeats have fuelled claims that Pakistan cricket has “been destroyed” under Naqvi’s watch. He did not shy away from the results, but he rejected the narrative that everything has gone backwards.
“Yes, absolutely, what happened in the Test match cannot be termed wrong. We have lost these two matches,” he admitted, before quickly widening the lens to white-ball cricket.
Naqvi argued that the current coaching set-up has already moved Pakistan up the ladder in ODIs and T20Is, and that those gains are being ignored in the rush to condemn the red-ball slump.
“I believe that, God willing, we will make progress in the coming days, just as we did in ODIs and T20Is. I have never been afraid of criticism, and I never will be. Those who say cricket has been destroyed since I came – look at what the rankings were before we brought our coaching team. We were eighth in ODIs and now we’re fifth, in T20Is we jumped to sixth position from ninth,” Naqvi said.
The message is clear: judge the regime on the full picture, not just the latest scar.
The England tour has already cost players their places and coaches their jobs. The chairman has nailed his colours to a policy of hard calls and constant churn when performances dip. The only question now is whether that brutal clarity can steady Pakistan cricket, or whether the next series will demand an even deeper cut.
