Urooj Niazi 
azhar mahmood interim red ball head coach of pakistan
Azhar Mahmood Announces Interim Test Head Coach of Pakistan Cricket Team.
The Pakistan Cricket Board has named Azhar Mahmood as the acting red-ball head coach of the Pakistan men’s cricket team. He has been appointed on an interim basis, at least until the end of his current contract with PCB, which will include Pakistan’s Test series against South Africa in October at home and Sri Lanka in December–January. Azhar, a former all-rounder, played a total of 21 Tests and 143 ODIs for Pakistan between 1996 and 2007. In that period, he scored three centuries and took 162 wickets as well. The 50-year-old had previously been the team’s assistant coach and was head coach during the T20I series against New Zealand in April.
Notably, the PCB acknowledged Azhar’s impressive red-ball resume in particular, including his time spent at Surrey in the English County Championship, specifically mentioning they won two titles while he was there. The PCB identified Azhar as a very strong candidate for the leadership role of the Test team because of his well-defined tactical identity, international experience, and more recent coaching success through several levels of professional cricket. However, there has not been a fully active red-ball coach, either permanently or on some form of interim basis, since Jason Gillespie stepped away from that role at the end of 2024, with the PCB able to appoint several interim coaches. There have been multiple interim coaches since Gillespie resigned, including Aaqib Javed, but the PCB hopes that Azhar’s appointment will lead to some stability as the Pakistan team looks to find its footing in the current cycle of the World Test Championship.
