LAHORE: Najam Sethi, interim chairman of the country’s cricket board’s Management Committee, told Dawn on Monday that former Pakistan head coach Mickey Arthur is going to return to the national team setup, but in a consulting capacity.
According to Sethi, “the negotiations are being finalized with Mickey Arthur to work as a consultant with the Pakistan team with his own hand-picked support staff.” Mickey Arthur is currently selecting five officials for his support staff.
“While three officials have been selected and two remain, we will move forward with hiring their services as soon as he gives the names of his selected support staff.”
Since Sethi assumed control of the board, Arthur has been expected to return as Pakistan coach. Sethi succeeded Ramiz Raja as chairman of the PCB, who had fallen out of favor with Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, the board’s patron, last month.
Soon after, the PCB confirmed that it had written to Arthur, but it also said that talks had broken down because the coach had contractual obligations to Derbyshire, an English county team.
The board said in a statement that the option to hire Arthur “as a consultant to the PCB on a time-sharing basis with Derbyshire” or as a coach was “proving difficult to materialise for various reasons on both sides.”
However, Sethi said last week that he was still in talks with the former Australia coach and that “90 percent distance was covered,” with a final decision contingent on the hiring of support staff. This brought the chapter back to life.
Pakistan rose to the top of the Twenty20 international rankings and won the ICC Champions Trophy in 2017 under Arthur’s direction from 2016 to 2019.
After Pakistan’s narrow exit from the semi-finals of the 2019 World Cup in England, the 54-year-old felt out of favor. On a three-year contract, Arthur, who has also coached in Sri Lanka and South Africa, is currently in charge of Derbyshire.
