Pakistan’s red-ball coach Jason Gillespie has supported the under-fire Shan Masood, claiming that he has led the side well despite having a humiliating 2-0 series defeat to Bangladesh at home. He also added that Pakistan haven’t played as a team and must work on with the series against England looming. However, Pakistan failed to prevent Bangladesh from scoring the remaining 143 runs on Day 5 of the second Test in Rawalpindi and suffered a 2-0 series loss as well.

Speaking to reporters after Pakistan’s loss in the second Test, Gillespie said as quoted by Cricket Pakistan: “Shan I feel has led the side very well. We just haven’t played well as a team and that’s the reality. We need to sharpen up on certain areas and we will sharpen up. I really want to back and believe in these players, they are good enough and have shown glimpses of how good we are. We just need to do it more often and consistently.”

Pakistan last won a home Test in early 2021 and since then lost to Australia, England, and Bangladesh. Under Babar Azam, they managed
to draw the two-Test series against New Zealand as well. At the post-match presentation, Masood also admitted that batting failures did hurt them but felt couldn’t restrict Bangladesh from 26-6 was most disappointing.

He stated: “We thought we were playing good cricket in Australia but not doing the job, that’s something we need to work on. It has happened four times in my tenure that we have left the team back into the contest when we were dominating.”274 was a good score in the first innings, me and Saim [Ayub] could have got more runs like Litton. But we should have done better from having them at 26/6. That’s something we need to work on and work on quickly.”