Pakistan Cricket Team: Grant Bradburn named as head coach of Pakistan

Grant Bradburn has been announced as the new head coach of Pakistan, as the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) announced in a statement on Saturday (May 13).

Bradburn will be the head of Pakistan's coaching team till 2025 as the former Kiwi player will be taking over the team's duties soon. He was appointed after a consultancy stint with the Pakistan team in the recently concluded New Zealand series.

Under Bradburn's tutelage, Pakistan blew away the Blackcaps 4-1 in the ODI series. He was also the head coach during the T20I series against the Kiwis, which ended 2-2.

Bradburn has prior experience as the fielding coach of Pakistan, and he has also worked with PCB's cricket academy in the past years. The former New Zealand player also had a stint with Scotland as their head coach.

"I am delighted to name Grant Bradburn as the head coach of our men's side. Bradburn joins the side with plethora of coaching experience. After having worked with our men's side before and at the National Cricket Academy, he understands our culture and philosophy of cricket well and is an ideal candidate to take our team forward," PCB chairman Najam Sethi after the announcement.

The Pakistan Way

Pakistan have also envisioned playing with a new bold aggressive strategy leading up to the ODI World Cup later this year. The new method is named as 'The Pakistan Way', where they will focus to showcase a much more robust approach to the games.

After the appointment, Bradburn expressed his ecstasy and says they need to push further and work harder to do well in the ICC tournaments. Pakistan reached the final of the T20 World Cup last year but faltered in the Final against England.

"It is a great honour for me to work with the highly talented and skilful side like Pakistan as a head coach. We have been working hard on our raising our game and are eager to showcase our growing skills. Mickey Arthur and I are excited to support, challenge and develop our players," the 56-year-old new Pakistan coach said.

"We have raised the bar of expectation and we will keep challenging our players. We have mutually agreed with our players they are capable of higher team scores, even when setting totals. There has been immediate positive signs during this series and this group of players is determined to continually improve, to put ourselves into contention to win major events," he added.