Pakistan changed Test coach again mid-series, and Mike Hesson was in Japan when it happened
Mike Hesson takes charge of Pakistan’s Test side at Edgbaston on Wednesday, the eighth man responsible for the job since May 2023. He says the squad was rebuilt without him.
Sep 5, 2026
Pakistan begin the third Test against England at Edgbaston on Wednesday, September 9, two down in the series and with a coach who was in Japan a fortnight ago. Mike Hesson has taken the red-ball job on an interim basis after Sarfaraz Ahmed was removed mid-tour in August. He is the latest name on a list that has become difficult to keep straight.
He was preparing a different team, in a different country
Hesson has been Pakistan’s white-ball head coach since 2025. When the PCB decided to change the Test set-up during a series it was losing, he was in Japan working with the squad for the Asian Games, and he was moved to England quickly because changes were coming. He has been careful to say he had no part in them.
Seven players were sent home during the tour and replaced by a group that includes several who have never played a Test. Hesson’s account of that week is not the language of a man running a plan.
“The last couple of days have been challenging for being in a hotel with some players coming, some players going,” he said.
A head coach who arrives after the squad has been rebuilt around him, for one match, is not really a head coach. He is a supervisor with a stopwatch. That is no reflection on Hesson, who has done good work with the white-ball side. It describes the job Pakistan handed him.
Everyone who has held this job since 2023
Grant Bradburn was appointed head coach in May 2023 on a two-year contract. He did not see out the year in the role. Mickey Arthur went after the 2023 World Cup and Mohammad Hafeez came in as team director for the tour of Australia that followed, and left after Pakistan lost that series 3-0.
In April 2024 the PCB split the job. Jason Gillespie took red-ball, Gary Kirsten took white-ball, both on two-year contracts. Kirsten resigned in October of that year. Gillespie was gone by December. Aqib Javed then held both jobs on an interim basis from December 2024 until Hesson was appointed to the white-ball role in May 2025, Azhar Mahmood took the red-ball side as acting head coach that June, and Sarfaraz Ahmed was given it in 2026 before being removed in August with bowling coach Umar Gul.
Count the interims and the team directors, because Pakistan cricket gives you no choice, and that is seven men responsible for the Test team in a little over three years. Two of them signed two-year contracts and neither finished a full year.
The results that triggered this one
England won at Headingley by an innings and 103 runs, bowling Pakistan out for 171 and 135 inside three days. At Lord’s, Pakistan were dismissed for 110 and 194 and lost by 194 runs, and the tour was decided with a match to play.
Two matches, four innings, and a highest total of 194. No coaching appointment fixes a batting line-up that cannot bat for two sessions, and no batting line-up learns anything durable from a man who will hand the job back in a week.
What Edgbaston is actually for
The series is gone, so the third Test is about which of the new players can survive an English seam attack in September. That is a reasonable thing to find out. It would be more useful if the person assessing them was going to be around to act on what he learns.