Gary Kirsten and Jason Gillespie were both hired as Pakistan’s white-ball and red-ball coaches respectively at the same time and it has turned out the pair also share the same opinion on the state of the sport’s administration in the country. Gillespie, the former Australia fast bowler, has said that the experience had “soured” his love for coaching and Kirsten, who had stepped down before the former, said that he understood pretty early on that he wouldn’t have too much authority on selection.
“It was a tumultuous few months,” Kirsten is quoted as saying by Wisden. “I realised quite quickly I wasn’t going to have much of an influence. Once I was taken off selection and asked to take a team and not be able to shape the team, it became very difficult as a coach then to have any sort of positive influence on the group.”
At the same time, though, like Gillespie, Kirsten also acknowledged that he loved just working with the Pakistan players and would go back only for them. “If I got invited back to Pakistan tomorrow, I would go, but I would want to go for the players, and I would want to go under the right circumstances,” he said.
‘Cricket teams need to be run by cricket people’
“Cricket teams need to be run by cricket people,” said Kirsten. “When that’s not happening and when there’s a lot of noise from the outside that’s very influential noise, it’s very difficult for leaders within the team to walk a journey that you feel like you need to walk in order to take this team to where it needs to go.”
Kirsten had famously led Pakistan’s arch-rivals India to victory in the 2011 World Cup. He said that Pakistan are a talented group of players and they could enjoy success if they and their coach are allowed to work without interference.
“I’m too old now to be dealing with other agendas, I just want to coach a cricket team, work with the players – I love the Pakistan players, they’re great guys. I had a very short period of time with them and I feel for them. More than any other team in the world, they feel the pressure of performance massively, when they lose it’s hectic for them and they feel that.
“But they’re professional cricketers and I’m a professional cricket coach. When we get into that environment, there are generally certain things you do to help a team be the best that they can be, and when there’s no interference, you go down the road, and if it’s a talented group of guys, you’re generally going to have success,” said Kirsten.
