Usama Mir's Critique of PCB Amidst Test Team Changes
Pakistan’s chaotic tour of England has spilled off the field, with leg-spinner Usama Mir firing a thinly veiled broadside at the Pakistan Cricket Board and team management after a brutal round of changes following back-to-back defeats.
Two heavy losses at Headingley and Lord’s have already cost Pakistan the three-match series. The response from the board has been swift and ruthless: seven players sent home, the head coach and bowling coach removed, and the final Test at Birmingham now handed to a different backroom team.
In the middle of that storm, Mir chose his moment.
“Amazing how someone managed to destroy the entire system, and nobody even noticed,” he posted on X, a line that cut through the usual diplomatic noise that surrounds Pakistan cricket.
He followed it with a pointed proverb: “Ab pachhtaye kya, jab chidiya chug gayin khet (It is no use crying over spilt milk).”
No names. No direct accusations. But the target felt obvious enough. The posts were quickly read as a stinging rebuke of PCB officials and the current management structure that has overseen yet another away capitulation.
Coaches axed, seven players sent home
The board’s clear-out has reshaped the touring party overnight.
Head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and bowling coach Umar Gul have been ordered back home before the final Test. In their place, white-ball head coach Mike Hesson and bowling coach Ashley Noffke will step in for a one-off rescue job in Birmingham, starting September 9.
The playing group has been cut just as sharply.
- Wicketkeeper Mohammad Rizwan
- Injured opener Imam-ul-Haq
- First Test captain Salman Ali Agha
- Spinner Ali Usman
- Pacer Khurram Shahzad
- All-rounder Aamir Jamal
- Batter Awais Zafar
Several of whom featured at Lord’s — have all been recalled from the tour. All-rounder Aamir Jamal and batter Awais Zafar are also heading home without having played a single match in England.
It is the kind of mid-series upheaval that has become grimly familiar to Pakistan followers: a flurry of reaction once the damage is already done.
Sarfaraz’s brief tenure ends in ruins
For Sarfaraz Ahmed, the axe falls after just three months in charge as head coach, a stint defined by a dismal away record. Under his watch, Pakistan have lost five of six Tests on foreign soil — two in Bangladesh, one in the West Indies and now two in England.
The numbers are brutal. The pattern is worse.
Babar Azam’s second spell as Test captain has not shifted the trajectory either. Installed again after Shan Masood was removed in May, Babar oversaw a 1-1 draw in the West Indies, but Pakistan have since slumped to consecutive defeats in England, surrendering this series with a game to spare.
Across their last 11 away Tests, Pakistan have lost 10. One draw, no wins, and a trail of questions about planning, selection and leadership that no late coaching reshuffle can disguise.
Mir’s words, framed as a lament rather than a rant, land in that context. The system, he suggests, was allowed to rot long before this tour. The board now scrambles to repair it with emergency changes and fresh voices in the dressing room.
Birmingham will not decide the series. That damage is already done.
It might, however, show whether this is the start of a reset — or just another short-lived patch on a deepening crack in Pakistan’s red-ball game.
