Former South Africa great Gary Kirsten, who won the ICC World Cup 2011 with the Indian team, shared his experience of coaching the Pakistan national cricket team and the difficulties he faced while doing his job.

With Jason Gillespie taking over as Pakistan Test head coach, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) hired Gary Kirsten as their white-ball coach in 2023. He had been on a two-year contract, but things got so bad that Kirsten quit his job after six months, later in the same year.

And now, Kirsten, who was at the helm when Pakistan exited the 2024 T20 World Cup after the first round in the USA and the West Indies, disclosed what he endured while working for the Pakistan Cricket Board.

"I think the thing that surprised me probably more than anything was, um, the level of interference. I don't think I've ever seen it at that level before. Did it surprise me? I don't know, but it was certainly significant. So, it's quite difficult for a coach to come and formulate a way that you can work with the players when there's just this constant noise from, you know, from the outside,” Kirsten said in conversation with talkSPORT.

"Um, it was tough, just this constant noise from the outside and, you know, a lot of, um, punitive actions around poor performance and stuff like that. And, you know, as a coach, you're the lowest-hanging fruit when the team's not going well.

So, you know, let's get rid of the coach or let's put a restriction on the coach, because that is the easiest thing to do when the teams are performing. And that's kind of counterproductive in my view; then why recruit the coach?" he added.

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Kirsten was not the only casualty of the Pakistan team’s poor performance, as a couple of months later, in December, Test coach Jason Gillespie also quit his role, citing more or less the same reasons.

Gillespie then blamed his and Kirsten’s exit on Aaqib Javed and stated that Javed undermined both of the head coaches behind their backs as he himself wanted to become the head coach across formats.