Pakistan sends seven players and two coaches home mid-series after two Test defeats

The Pakistan Cricket Board cut seven players and both the head coach and the bowling coach on 31 August, after England won the first two Tests by an innings and 103 runs and by 194 runs. The third Test is at Edgbaston from 9 September. Pakistan cannot win the series. The board still rebuilt the touring party in public, before some of the discarded players had been told.

Players in London learned the news from family messages and social media at about 5 p.m. on Monday. Team management had not briefed them. That sequence is now part of the story.

Who went home

The seven are Mohammad Rizwan, Imam-ul-Haq, Salman Ali Agha, Ali Usman, Khurram Shahzad, Aamir Jamal and Muhammad Awais Zafar. Five of them had played in the series. Jamal and Zafar had not. Ali Usman took a five-wicket haul at Headingley and was still put on a flight.

Pakistan failed to pass 200 in all four innings of the two Tests. Imam was injured. Salman had captained the first Test. Rizwan is a former captain. Sending those names home mid-tour is a statement about the present dressing room, not a planning note for the next cycle.

Head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed, appointed in April after only under-19 work and a two-Test stint in the Caribbean, was replaced by white-ball coach Mike Hesson. Bowling coach Umar Gul was replaced by former Australia seamer Ashley Noffke. Sarfaraz's red-ball record in the job is grim: five defeats in six away Tests, across Bangladesh, the West Indies and England.

Who comes in

Batters Saim Ayub and Abdullah Fazal have some Test cricket behind them. The rest of the intake is thin on red-ball proof. Spin-bowling all-rounder Arafat Minhas, left-arm seamer Mohammed Imran Jr, wicketkeeper Said Baig and all-rounders Mohammad Imran and Razaullah have little or no Test experience. Shahid Afridi asked, in public, why T20 names were being flown in for a Test in England in September.

The former captains

Afridi called it "the most shocking decision ever by a selection committee." Ramiz Raja told the BBC the board had "hit a panic button." Shoaib Malik said phrases such as "sent on the first flight back" were disrespectful and that accountability belongs at the end of a tour. Mickey Arthur, a former Pakistan coach, wrote that constant chopping of players, coaches and selectors is why the team stays unstable.

The selection committee includes Misbah-ul-Haq. Cricinfo reported that he has offered to resign and that the board has not accepted it. Babar Azam is in a second stint as Test captain after Shan Masood was removed in May. The captain stayed. The coach and seven teammates did not.

England will play a Pakistan side that has already lost the series, changed its coaching box and mixed uncapped bowlers into a late-summer Edgbaston pitch. The result of that experiment will be on the scoreboard from 9 September. The method is already on the record.