Former South Africa cricketer and current white-ball coach of the Pakistan men’s cricket team is likely to quit from the position six months into the job. Kirsten reportedly has had disagreements with the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and some of the players and one of the most respected figures in the cricketing fraternity is likely to step down. There has been no official statement from the PCB yet but things seems to have nosedived rather quickly after Pakistan announced Mohammad Rizwan as their new white-ball captain.
As per a Cricbuzz report, Kirsten is unlikely to travel to Australia and Zimbabwe for the white-ball tours and his request to appoint David Reid as the High-Performance Director might have started it all as it didn’t go down well with the PCB. The alternatives suggested by the PCB weren’t acceptable to Kirsten and things seemed to have gotten out of hand with the report stating that the new white-ball coach might be announced immediately.
The red-ball coach Jason Gillespie and the national selector and former Pakistan pacer, Aaqib Javeb, are the two current prospects for the role, the latter being the frontrunner. Aaqib was credited highly for all the gambles Pakistan took in terms of selections and decisions to eke out a 2-1 Test series win against England after dropping the opening games despite scoring 556 runs in the first game.
Kirsten was confirmed as the next white-ball coach of Pakistan in April last week before he joined the team in the second half of May after he was done with his duties in the IPL with the Gujarat Titans. Under Kirsten, Pakistan won the T20 series against Ireland 2-1, before losing to England 0-2 and more prominently failing to qualify for the Super Eights in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup following defeats to India and the USA. There have been speculations regarding Kirsten’s premature exit since then.
The first batch of Pakistan’s white-ball squad for the Australia tour is set to leave on Monday, October 28, with the second one on Tuesday.