Jason Gillespie, Pakistan’s red-ball coach, has described his role as “matchday strategist”, acknowledging his reduced remit since a reorganisation one game into the series against England stripped him of his influence over team selection.
Defeat by an innings and 47 runs prompted the Pakistan Cricket Board to change its approach to the Test side. It abandoned a brief dalliance with focusing on and creating conditions that reward seam bowling – even though that seemed to be a key factor behind the appointment of Gillespie less than six months ago – and transformed the method of selection, dropping the side’s two best fast bowlers and filling the team with spinners. The board then decided to play the second Test on a used pitch as dry and worn as possible to help the hosts succeed. They won that game by 152 runs.
On his appointment, Gillespie said “within Pakistan we have a number of high-quality fast bowlers and being able to utilise them will be a key part of any success we enjoy”. For the second Test – and again for the final game that starts on Thursday, where they will field an unchanged side – the team contained no specialist fast bowlers.
“The PCB came out and made some changes after that [first] Test match,” Gillespie said on Wednesday. “It was decided that a new selection panel would come in and they would be making decisions. So I was not involved in the decision-making, I was just there.
“I’m now just the coach on matchday strategy, so I keep out of things and just focus on the players and getting them ready for cricket. It’s not for me to talk about. I’ll let the selectors do their job and we’ll just go out there and play the best cricket we can possibly play.”
On the eve of the deciding Test some of what Gillespie said about his team’s approach to playing England seemed equally applicable to coping with the maelstrom of Pakistan cricket. “A real learning for us as a team going forward is staying calm when things are constantly changing,” he said. “Just the clarity, the calmness. Being clear on what we’re trying to do with all the chaos that goes on.”
Asked about the tumult that has come to characterise the PCB and Pakistan’s national side, Gillespie said: “The last few years Pakistan’s Test cricket hasn’t been where we’d like it to be. Coming into this environment, as a coach I’m very protective of players. They’re the ones going out and representing the country and playing. It’s the dad in me that comes out and I want to protect the boys from all outside noise.
“There’s a lot of things in professional sport that you can’t control. To be able to just park that and not focus on that is a skill in itself.”
The contrast in atmosphere between the two camps was illustrated on Wednesday when England dedicated half of their final training session to simply having fun, staging a six-hitting competition involving all of their players (Rehan Ahmed beat Harry Brook in the final). “Last training session of a long tour, we just tried to change it up and get the good vibes going,” Ben Stokes said. “It’s been Groundhog Day over and over again, cricket ground to hotel, cricket ground to hotel. We just tried to change it up.”
Gillespie said: “In my time in cricket, playing against England and that, I’m not sure I’ve seen a more relaxed, happy environment from an England squad. They look like they’re having a lot of fun. They look like they’re all aligned.”
