Usama Mir Critiques PCB Amid Test Team Overhaul

Pakistan’s chaotic Test tour of England has spilled beyond the boundary rope, with leg-spinner Usama Mir taking a thinly veiled swipe at the Pakistan Cricket Board and team management after a brutal mid-series overhaul.

The tourists have already surrendered the three-match series, beaten at Headingley and Lord’s, and now head into the final Test at Birmingham on September 9 under a completely altered regime. Seven players have been sent home. The head coach and bowling coach have been replaced. The mood around the camp is anything but calm.

Into that turbulence stepped Mir, not with a press conference, but with a pointed post on X.

“Amazing how someone managed to destroy the entire system, and nobody even noticed,” he wrote, without naming names but leaving little doubt about the target of his frustration.

He followed it with a stinging proverb: “Ab pachhtaye kya, jab chidiya chug gayin khet (It is no use crying over spilt milk).”

No official was mentioned. No coach, no selector, no board member. Yet the timing and tone made the message unmistakable — a public rebuke of how Pakistan cricket has been handled during a grim run of overseas results and, in particular, during this fractured tour of England.

Coaches sent home, new faces in for final Test

The PCB’s response to the twin defeats has been drastic. Head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and bowling coach Umar Gul have been ordered back home before the final Test, their brief tenure ending in the middle of a series.

White-ball head coach Mike Hesson has been drafted in to take charge of the red-ball side for the Birmingham Test, joined by bowling coach Ashley Noffke. A white-ball brain trust now inherits a red-ball crisis.

The clear-out has extended to the dressing room. Wicketkeeper Mohammad Rizwan, injured opener Imam-ul-Haq, first Test captain Salman Ali Agha, spinner Ali Usman and pacer Khurram Shahzad — several of whom featured in the Lord’s defeat — have all been recalled from the tour.

Two others, all-rounder Aamir Jamal and batter Awais Zafar, leave England without playing a single match.

It is a brutal cut. A signal that the board has lost patience not only with results, but with the broader direction of the Test side.

Sarfaraz’s brief reign ends in away-day misery

For Sarfaraz Ahmed, the decision draws a line under a difficult three-month spell as head coach, defined almost entirely by failure overseas.

Under his watch, Pakistan lost five of six away Tests: two in Bangladesh, one in the West Indies and now two in England. One draw in the Caribbean offered brief respite, but no real sense of progress.

The numbers are stark. Pakistan have now lost 10 of their last 11 away Tests. That is not a blip; it is a pattern.

Leadership changes have not shifted that trajectory. Babar Azam’s second stint as Test captain, which began after Shan Masood was removed in May, has yet to ignite a turnaround. Pakistan managed a 1-1 draw in the West Indies with Babar at the helm, but the tour of England has stripped away any illusion of stability.

Two matches, two defeats, and a captain once again trying to rally a side while the ground keeps slipping beneath it.

A system under fire

This is the backdrop to Mir’s outburst. A leg-spinner on the fringes of the setup, watching a familiar story unfold: panic after defeat, sweeping changes, and a search for quick fixes rather than structural answers.

His words cut to the heart of a wider frustration in Pakistani cricket circles — that the “system” itself has been eroded over time, and that those responsible have escaped scrutiny until the damage has become impossible to ignore.

The PCB’s latest moves may spark a reaction in Birmingham. They may even produce a one-off response from a wounded side. But the deeper question hangs in the air, sharpened by Mir’s barbed post: is this another short-term jolt, or the start of a reckoning with how Pakistan build and manage their Test team in the modern game?