Gillespie opens up on issues which forced him to quit Pakistan coaching job
The sacking of Tim Nielsen as high performance red-ball coach was among a number of issues with the PCB which left him “completely humiliated”, says former Australia great Jason Gillespie, looking back at his short nine-month stint as Pakistan head coach. In April 2024, the Pakistan Cricket Board had appointed Gillespie as the head coach in red-ball cricket and former South African batter Gary Kirsten was roped in for a similar role in white-ball formats.
However, Kirsten’s resignation in October later that year followed Gillespie’s in December, when Nielsen was communicated by the PCB that his services would not be needed before the tour of South Africa 2024-25. A former head coach of the Australian team, Nielsen was appointed as the high performance red-ball coach in August 2024. “I was coaching the Pakistan Test side.
The PCB sacked our senior assistant coach with ZERO communication with me about it — as Head Coach I found this situation completely unacceptable,” Gillespie wrote on ‘X’ when asked by a user why he had left his role with the Pakistan Test team. “There were a number of other issues which left me completely humiliated,” he added.
Nielsen’s axing, before Pakistan’s tour of South Africa, was perhaps the final blow to a rapidly disintegrating relationship between Gillespie and the PCB, which ended with him refusing to board the flight from Adelaide to South Africa and eventually resigning.
In between his resignation and the exit of Kirsten, Gillespie had also served as the interim white-ball coach. Gillespie was succeeded by former Pakistan cricketer Aaqib Javed across formats, who was also serving on the selection panel. While he was with the Pakistan team, Gillespie felt he was “completely and utterly blindsided” by the PCB.
He told ABC Sport, “There were certainly challenges. I went into the job eyes wide open, I want to make that really clear. I knew that, you know, Pakistan had cycled through a number of coaches in a pretty short space of time. “The straw that broke the camel’s back, I suppose, was, as a head coach, you like to have clear communication with your employer. I
Was completely and utterly blindsided by a decision to not have a high-performance coach. Tim Nielsen was told that his services were no longer required and I had absolutely zero communication from anyone about that.”
“And I just thought after a number of other things that had gone on in the previous few months, that was probably the moment where I thought, ‘Well, I’m not really sure if they actually want me to do this job or not’.”
Gillespie even said he felt his job was reduced to giving players catching practice before a match. “I felt I was basically hitting catches and that was about it on the morning of a game,” he said.
“You want to be able to have clear communication with all stakeholders, with selectors, for instance, knowing what the team is as head coach well before the game, or before at least the day before the game,” Gillespie added.
According to ESPNCricinfo, Gillespie and PCB are now engaged in a financial dispute with the former coach claiming he was not paid his dues while the board claims he did not provide them with a four-month notice period as per their contract.
