Chaos is a familiar foe for Pakistan, and amidst the side’s tour, their performances have been quite poor, losing the first two Tests of the series with one more game remaining. Pakistan’s hierarchy pulled the plug by removing the coaching staff and dropping seven players for the final Test. And the radical decision was not well-received by former players and pundits; however, the latest critic was young spinner Usama Mir through his social media post.

“Amazing how someone managed to destroy the entire system, and nobody even noticed,” Mir wrote in a post on X.

“Ab pachhtaye kya, jab chidiya chug gayin khet (No use crying over spilt milk now, the birds have already eaten the crops),” he wrote.

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Former batting legend Mohammad Yousuf too slammed the decision. “The recent decision by the authorities to recall players and coaching staff from the ongoing tour does not appear to be only performance related,” Yousuf wrote on social media.

“After all, we are not sending legends like Zaheer Abbas, Javed Miandad, Inzamam-ul-Haq, or Saeed Anwar as replacements. Instead, this move reflects the familiar cycle of internal chaos, differences of opinion, and controversies that have long haunted Pakistan cricket,” he added.

Speaking to Geo News, Aaqib Javed, the PCB’s director of high performance and a member of the selection committee, mounted a direct defence of the overhaul, arguing the team’s inability to compete, not the original squad selection, had forced the board’s hand.

“When we select a team, we sit with the coach and captain and build a squad. We are absolutely prepared to take responsibility for that squad,” he said. “But when you go on tour, you have to make the kind of combination you need from match to match.” He said he had personally told captain Babar Azam and the coaching staff before the Lord’s Test to play fast bowler Ubaid Shah, since Pakistan’s other three seamers were all similarly paced, and argued the team should also have picked wicketkeeper Ghazi Ghori ahead of Rizwan. “No batter in our top seven bowls,” he said. “One fast bowler changes the composition of your attack.”