The world has seen Gary Kirsten who became India’s 2011 World Cup-winning coach for his role as a national team and T20 franchise coach. After his stint with India, Kirsten joined South Africa. He had a brief spell with Pakistan in 2024, and he is now with the Sri Lankan national team. He lost his position because of his unplanned departure from Pakistan. His contract as head coach started in April 2024 because the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) selected him to work for two years. Kirsten resigned after two months of work because he had problems with PCB about how players should be selected.
Kirsten has now opened up like never before about the difficulty of working with the Mohsin Naqvi-led PCB.
I found the level of interference which surprised me the most because of its unexpected nature. The level of interference which I observed exceeded all previous experiences. Did it surprise me? I don’t know, but it was significant,” Kirsten said while speaking to talkSPORT Cricket.
The outside noise which continuously surrounds him makes it hard for a coach to develop his player training methods. The outside noise which continuously surrounded us created difficulties for us while the organization imposed penalties to deal with our performance failures.
The team will choose to fire the coach or impose restrictions on the coach because underperforming teams create an easy target which first teams need to assess. The decision to hire the coach raises questions about his purpose. Kirsten added.
The Sri Lanka cricket team hired Kirsten as their head coach after the T20 World Cup 2026 through a contract which began on April 15 and lasted for two years. As head coach of Sri Lanka, Kirsten will lead the team until April 14, 2028 because he needs to prepare them for the 2027 ODI World Cup which will occur in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia.
Kirsten worked with Cricket Namibia at his most recent position, where he acted as a consultant for the T20 World Cup that just finished.
Kirsten will lead Sri Lanka’s men’s national team through its preparation and campaign for the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup 2027 according to a statement from SLC.
Kirsten stands as one of South Africa’s top three batters during his playing career from 1993 to 2004 because he scored 14087 runs in Tests and One-Day Internationals which included 21 Test centuries and 13 ODI hundreds.
