Usama Mir's Critique of PCB Amid Test Overhaul
Pakistan’s chaotic Test tour of England has spilled from the dressing room onto social media, with leg-spinner Usama Mir posting a thinly veiled rebuke of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and team management after a drastic mid-series overhaul.
Defeats at Headingley and Lord’s have already sealed the three-match series for England, leaving the final Test at Birmingham, starting September 9, as little more than a salvage mission. The PCB’s response has been brutal: coaches removed, seven players sent home, and a fresh set of voices brought in for a dead rubber.
Mir, watching the fallout, chose his moment.
“Amazing how someone managed to destroy the entire system, and nobody even noticed,” he wrote on X, a line that landed like a bouncer aimed at the boardroom rather than the opposition dressing room.
He followed it up 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. Within minutes, the posts were being read as a sharp, public indictment of PCB officials and the current team setup, a reflection of wider unease around a side that has forgotten how to win away from home.
Coaches sent home, new faces for a dead rubber
The PCB has acted with the urgency of a board under siege. Head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and bowling coach Umar Gul have been ordered back home before the third Test, their brief tenures ending not with a quiet review but with an abrupt recall.
White-ball head coach Mike Hesson has been handed the Test reins for Birmingham, with Ashley Noffke stepping in as bowling coach. It is an emergency patch-up job for a tour that has spiralled quickly.
The playing group has not been spared either. Seven players have been pulled out of the tour: 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 at Lord’s — are all on their way home.
All-rounder Aamir Jamal and batter Awais Zafar, who did not play a single match on this tour, have also been released, their England experience ending without so much as a debut to show for it.
The message is clear: no one is safe when a series is lost inside two Tests.
Sarfaraz’s brief reign ends in ruins
For Sarfaraz Ahmed, the end has come swiftly. His three-month spell as head coach has yielded a grim ledger: five defeats in six away Tests. Two losses in Bangladesh, one in the West Indies and now two in England have left his tenure looking like a holding pattern that never stabilized.
The numbers are unforgiving. Pakistan have now lost 10 of their last 11 away Tests, a staggering collapse for a side once feared for its resilience on foreign soil.
Leadership at the top has offered little respite. Babar Azam’s second stint as Test captain, which began after Shan Masood was removed in May, has not shifted the trajectory. Pakistan drew 1-1 in the West Indies under Babar, but in England they have been outplayed in both matches, the series gone with a game to spare.
What remains is a team in flux and a board scrambling for answers.
Mir’s words cut through that confusion. A system “destroyed,” damage noticed too late, regret arriving only after the fields have been stripped bare.
The third Test at Birmingham will not decide this series. It may, however, tell Pakistan whether this is just another bad tour — or the latest chapter in a deeper, long-term decline.
