Jason Gillespie has resigned as head coach of the Pakistan Test side, according to the PCB. This was officially confirmed after a few days of lingering uncertainty, culminating in Gillespie refusing to board his flight to join the Pakistan Test team in South Africa. Gillespie’s scheduled flight to South Africa was at 6AM Adelaide time on Friday, but he informed the PCB he had no intention of boarding it, deciding instead to walk away as relations between the coach and the board hit an all-time low.
Aaqib Javed will take over as Test coach on an interim basis for the series in South Africa; he is currently the interim coach of both white-ball sides.
ESPNcricinfo had first reported that Gillespie’s days as head coach of Pakistan were done
last month, and that Aaqib would take over across formats. At the time, the PCB responded by
refuting that story, insisting Gillespie would be coach for the two Tests against South Africa, while pointedly declining to commit to stating that he would see out his contract. However, the relationship between the board and the coach only went from bad to worse, and Gillespie would not take charge of another Test for Pakistan again.
As ESPNcricinfo
first reported, Gillespie was left particularly angered after the PCB decided against renewing high-performance red-ball coach Tim Nielsen’s contract, and had been left considering his options. Gillespie was offended he wasn’t consulted, or even told, before that decision was taken, and is understood to have left a lack of respect on part of the PCB. Nielsen told ESPNcricinfo he was happy to continue, and fully available for Pakistan’s Test series in South Africa and at home against the West Indies next month, but he was informed his services would no longer be required.
This appears to have been the final straw for Gillespie. ESPNcricinfo understands he communicated his intention not to travel under present circumstances to the board. Whether the PCB have made contact with him to persuade him to travel is unclear; a source close to Gillespie said the PCB had made no contact with him over the past day.
Either way, a relationship which has continually fractured over the past few months reached breaking point. Gillespie was hired by the PCB to great fanfare alongside Gary Kirsten in April, with chairman Mohsin Naqvi saying his “stellar track record” preceded him. But since October, the board has cooled on the Australian, initially removing him from the selection panel for the Test side. It left him believing he was merely a “matchday analyst”
pointing out it wasn’t what he signed up for. He is believed to have had negligible input on the selection of the Test squad for the tour of South Africa, and was out of the loop for the decision not to extend Nielsen’s contract.
There was limited communication between the player and the board since the end of Pakistan’s white-ball series in Australia, where he coached the side on an interim basis after Kirsten quit. The PCB did initially ask Gillespie to take up that position until that Champions Trophy, but without an accompanying financial offer to reflect the increased scope of his role. It was another factor that led to relations between the board and the head coach being strained.
Gillespie’s anger is understood to partly stem from what he felt was a great rapport Nielsen had developed with the players, a point he had made more than once in public. It is believed both Gillespie and Nielsen consider the fact that Nielsen is not based in Pakistan as the reason his contract hasn’t been extended, though, as Nielsen confirmed, he would have been available for the upcoming two tours in their entirety.
While it is understood the PCB has not yet made a decision on any potential replacement for Nielsen, the current administration has sought to replace overseas coaches it appointed earlier in the year with Pakistan-based ones. Aaqib, who took over the white-ball teams on an interim basis next month, now becomes the all-format coach, and is also on the selection panel.
Gillespie resigning potentially spares the PCB from paying out the entirety of the remainder of his contract, as they would have needed to if they had decided to sack him. It was believed to be a consideration in Gillespie’s initial reluctance to quit, even as it became clear the PCB no longer wanted him there.
Pakistan play the first Test in Centurion on December 26, with the second in Cape Town starting on January 3.
This article was updated at 18:32 PM GMT following the official departure of Gillespie
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