Mohsin Naqvi's Ruthless Approach to Pakistan Cricket

Pakistan cricket is in the middle of a storm, and Mohsin Naqvi is standing right in the eye of it.

The heavy, almost listless defeat on the England tour did more than dent pride. It triggered one of the most ruthless mid-series shake-ups Pakistan cricket has seen in years. Seven players were ordered home before the tour was even done. Senior members of the coaching staff were told to clear their desks. Among them: former captain Sarfaraz Ahmed and bowling coach Umar Gul, two big names shown the door in a single, brutal sweep.

This was the Pakistan Cricket Board’s response to a team that had not just lost, but barely thrown a punch.

Naqvi, though, is not retreating under the barrage of criticism. He accepts that Pakistan cricket is going through a rough, uncomfortable phase, but he is not buying the narrative that the sky is falling. To make his point, he reached for examples that still sting other giants of the game.

“South Africa lost to Namibia, and India lost to Ireland. Has cricket ended there as well?” he asked in a video that has raced across social media, his tone more combative than apologetic.

The message was clear: upsets happen, even to the best. Pakistan, he insisted, will not be treated as a unique disaster just because they have been embarrassed on a high-profile tour.

Naqvi framed the current period as one of hard choices and necessary ruthlessness.

“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,” he said, underlining a selection policy that leaves little room for sentiment.

That stance feeds directly into the debate around Salman Agha. Once viewed as one of Pakistan’s key men across formats, Agha has drifted badly out of form, his recent outings a shadow of the player the selectors believed they had.

“Agha is such a brilliant player, and yet he is not clicking at the moment for certain reasons,” Naqvi explained. “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.”

It is a cold line, but in Naqvi’s mind, a necessary one. Reputation will not protect you. Output will.

As the Test defeats pile up, the criticism has increasingly turned personal, aimed at Naqvi’s tenure and the coaching structure he installed. The charge from his detractors is blunt: Pakistan cricket has gone backwards on his watch.

Naqvi rejects that outright.

He concedes the two recent Test losses were damaging and cannot be sugar-coated. But he refuses to let them define the broader picture he is trying to paint.

“Yes, absolutely, what happened in the Test match cannot be termed wrong. We have lost these two matches,” he admitted. Then he pivoted. “But I believe that, God willing, we will make progress in the coming days, just as we did in ODIs and T20Is.”

For Naqvi, the white-ball record is his shield. He points to the rankings as proof that the current setup has delivered improvement where it was targeted.

“Those who say cricket has been destroyed since I came - look at what the rankings were before we brought our coaching team,” he said. “We were eighth in ODIs and now we're fifth, in T20Is we jumped to sixth position from ninth.”

The numbers are doing a lot of talking for him. They are also his answer to those who claim he has presided over a decline.

“I have never been afraid of criticism, and I never will be,” he added, a line that sounds less like a defence and more like a challenge.

The immediate reality, though, is harsher than any ranking table. Pakistan have just chopped their squad mid-tour, removed prominent coaches, and placed their faith in a selection policy that promises no comfort to out-of-form players, however gifted.

The next ball Pakistan face will not just test technique or temperament. It will test whether Naqvi’s hard-edged vision can actually drag this team out of its slump—or whether this ruthless reset only deepens the fracture lines already running through Pakistan cricket.