“There were certainly challenges. I came into the job with my eyes wide open, I want to make that very clear. I knew Pakistan had gone through a number of coaches in a fairly short space of time,” Gillespie said. ABC Sport. “The final straw, I guess, was that as a head coach, you like to have clear communication with your employer. I was completely and completely surprised by the decision not to have a high-performance coach.”
“Tim Nielsen was told his services were no longer needed and no one communicated anything to me about it,” Gillespie said. “And I thought after a number of other things that had happened in the previous months, that was probably the moment where I thought, ‘Well, I’m not really sure if they really want me to do this job or not.'” .'”
Adding to Gillespie’s frustration was the fact that the feedback he received about Nielsen and the team’s performance was positive.
“I developed a very close relationship with Test captain Shan Masood and felt we were certainly going in the right direction and things were going very well,” he said. “All the feedback I got or the feedback the PCB got was how effective, you know, Tim had also been in his role and the players were getting a lot out of him.”
Gillespie led Pakistan to a 2-1 victory against England in October, after losing the first match by an innings and 47 runs. However, after the defeat in the first test, he was informed that a new selection panel would be presented of which he would not be part.
“I felt like I was basically making catches and that was it on the morning of a game,” he said. “You want to be able to have clear communication with all stakeholders, with the selectors for example, knowing what the team is like as a head coach long before the game, or at least the day before the game.
