Pakistan cricket is stuck in a vicious loop: every setback triggers a reshuffle, every reshuffle resets the clock, and the game on the field keeps paying the bill. When a country preparing to host a global event can’t control the basics —venues, planning, leadership clarity — “transition” stops being a phase and becomes a permanent condition.
A home tournament that looked like a construction deadline
The ICC Champions Trophy build-up was meant to be Pakistan’s credibility play: proof that the sport could be run, hosted and sold with the polish of a mature ecosystem. Instead, the lead-up leaned heavily on urgency and reassurance.
The PCB began redevelopment work at three major venues — Gaddafi Stadium, National Stadium Karachi and Rawalpindi Cricket Stadium — while repeatedly stressing that the revamps would be completed on time. The very need to keep repeating that message underlined the anxiety. For fans, the stadium narrative landed as a metaphor: if the flagship show is framed by scaffolding and timelines, it’s hard to believe the rest of the system is steady.
Hosting isn’t just about new seats and lights; it’s about signalling control, planning and credibility. When readiness becomes a storyline, it chips away at trust because the subtext is simple: if the board is scrambling for the biggest event, what does that say about the everyday machinery that runs the game?
Coaches and selectors: the churn that kills continuity
Instability isn’t just an administrative footnote; it has become Pakistan cricket’s operating system. The recent coaching carousel is the clearest evidence.
In 2024, the PCB sought stability by appointing Gary Kirsten as white-ball head coach and Jason Gillespie as Test coach – names that suggested a long-term plan. Within months, Kirsten stepped down, and Gillespie also moved on. What was packaged as a rebuild quickly began to look like another reset.
After Pakistan’s Champions Trophy failure, interim head coach and selector Aaqib Javed put a brutal number on the chaos: nearly 16 coaches and 26 selectors in around two years. Even allowing for interim appointments and overlapping roles, it captures what players live with—constant changes in messaging, selection logic and authority.
And this turbulence doesn’t stay in boardrooms. Different coaches bring different roles, different fitness and fielding demands, different tactical philosophies. When the “project” changes every few months, players stop building toward an identity and start surviving selection cycles. The dressing room becomes political by default: when power is temporary, clarity becomes negotiable.
Politicisation at the top, confusion everywhere else
Pakistan cricket has rarely been insulated from power, but the perception of politicisation has hardened because leadership itself often looks like a political appointment cycle.
Every time the chair changes, the ripple hits instantly: committees are reshuffled, captains are swapped, coaches are hired and fired, and priorities are rewritten. That creates a culture where decisions feel less like cricket logic and more like survival tactics—short-term moves designed to win the next headline rather than the next tournament.
The problem is not Pakistan’s talent base. The country keeps producing fast bowlers, stroke-makers and match-winners. The problem is the runway: the team rarely gets long enough under one coherent set of ideas to convert talent into identity.
The real cost: performance, reputation, and a lost future
The cost is competitive and reputational. Competitive, because continuity is a performance advantage in modern international cricket. The best teams don’t just pick players—they build systems: roles that stay stable across series, selection philosophies that don’t flip every tour, and leadership groups that aren’t replaced after every wobble.
Reputational, because every public U-turn makes it harder to sell the promise that Pakistan cricket is moving forward. Sponsors, broadcasters and even fans don’t need perfection, but they do need predictability. When the board looks like it’s governing in bursts—reacting, reshuffling, restarting—it becomes difficult to trust any “vision statement.”
The solution is boring, which is exactly why it works: stable roles, clear authority for coaches and selectors, transparent performance benchmarks, and a domestic pathway that isn’t rewritten every cycle. Most of all, governance that looks like governance—so the team can stop living in permanent “rebuilding” mode and start acting like a side with a future.
Because right now, Pakistan cricket isn’t losing only matches. It’s losing time. And in elite sport, time—used well—is the one advantage money can’t buy back.
