'The board itself has demotivated the players': Saeed Ajmal launches scathing attack on Mohsin Naqvi-led PCB

'The board itself has demotivated the players': Saeed Ajmal launches scathing attack on Mohsin Naqvi-led PCB originally appeared on Cricket News. Add Cricket News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

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Former Pakistan spinner Saeed Ajmal said the PCB itself has demotivated Pakistan's players more than any critic.

He blamed a power struggle between selector Aaqib Javed and coach Mike Hesson.

His comments came days after PCB chief Mohsin Naqvi defended the mass squad overhaul.

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Saeed Ajmal launches scathing attack on Mohsin Naqvi-led PCB

Mohsin Naqvi's plea for the country to stop demotivating Pakistan's players has run straight into a rebuttal from one of the team's own former stars. Saeed Ajmal has accused the PCB chairman of presiding over the very institution most responsible for the damage.

The exchange follows Pakistan's chaotic response to a 2-0 series defeat in England, in which seven players were sent home mid-tour and head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and bowling coach Umar Gul were both released.

Muhammad Rizwan, Imam-ul-Haq, Salman Ali Agha, Ali Usman, Khurram Shahzad, Aamir Jamal and Muhammad Awais Zafar were the players axed, with Saim Ayub, Abdullah Fazal and five uncapped players called up in their place.

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Naqvi had defended the decisions in a lengthy interview with Geo Network, insisting the changes were about finding better options rather than punishing anyone. Ajmal's response, delivered on Samaa TV, rejected that framing entirely.

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What Saeed Ajmal said about the PCB demotivating players

Ajmal directly countered Naqvi's appeal for critics to ease off the players, arguing the board itself was the source of the problem. He pointed to a specific power struggle he believes is driving the decision-making.

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"The board itself has demotivated the players more than anyone else. The board is not letting any player stand. There are players who have done well who are also dropped. There are players who have been humiliated by PCB," Ajmal said.

He named two figures he holds responsible for the disarray. "Aaqib Javed and Mike Hesson are a team. These two are controlling everything and are responsible for this whole mess. The whole issue is about egos," Ajmal said.

Ajmal's conclusion was blunt about the scale of the damage, as he added: "Our team has gone back by 10 years. We have not planned for the future".

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Why Mohsin Naqvi defended the PCB's changes

Naqvi had framed the overhaul as a necessary response to results rather than a punitive exercise, singling out Salman Ali Agha as an example of a good player who simply had not clicked.

"Every match of a series is important for us, and we are not left with any option if a player is not performing but to look for his replacement. The purpose behind these changes is not to axe players from contention but just to replace them," Naqvi said.

He had added: "Consider Agha, who is a very good player, but he could not click because of some reason. He was spoken to about it."

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He pushed back hard against critics, questioning the credibility of those driving the narrative. "Everyone has a right to criticise performances, but they portray these losses as terminal. It is not acceptable for those former players who have not achieved anything in life to push this narrative," Naqvi said.

He added that he consults former cricketers regularly and accepted Pakistan's Test form was poor but argued the criticism was being used to push him out of his role. Naqvi pointed to white-ball results as evidence his broader approach was working.

"We have jumped to number five from eight in ODIs and won four of the six series since we have appointed the new coaching set-up. We were ninth in T20Is and now sit at sixth, and our success rate has climbed to 73 per cent from 24," he said. "Yet, there is criticism that cricket is finished in the country."

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Why the Ajmal-Naqvi clash exposes the real problem in Pakistan cricket

Both men are, in their own way, identifying something true. Naqvi is right that white-ball results have genuinely improved under the current coaching structure, and a side climbing from ninth to sixth in the T20I rankings deserves that fact stated plainly rather than dismissed.

But Ajmal's specific allegation, that Aaqib Javed and Mike Hesson are operating as a bloc that controls selection beyond their formal remit, is corroborated by other reporting suggesting Hesson recommended several of the players sent home to try out white-ball performers he already knew.

If a single coach-selector axis is now shaping Test squads based on personal familiarity rather than broader consensus, that is a structural problem no public relations effort can talk around. What makes Ajmal's intervention land is the specificity.

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Vague complaints about instability are easy for a board to dismiss as noise, which is precisely the framing Naqvi tried to apply. Naming the two individuals he believes are responsible, and describing the conflict as one of egos rather than cricketing judgement, is a harder charge to wave away, and it will only intensify pressure on the PCB to explain exactly how those selection calls were actually made.

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