As I looked to my left out of the Headingley press box shortly after the end of the first Test between England and Pakistan, one sight that caught my eye was the lack of Pakistan fans waiting to take pictures with their heroes and grab autographs.

I’ve been to Headingley many times and, win, lose or draw, the cricket-mad Pakistan support has been passionate and extremely vocal, but not on this occasion.

For a nation whose supporters have often been one of its greatest strengths, the absence of green shirts and flags throughout the match was difficult to ignore and displayed clear signs that Pakistan cricket has lost many of its fans, not just at home but also abroad.

Expectations have become so low that most matches are seen as an inevitable defeat. Things have become so bad that Pakistan have lost their last four Test matches against Bangladesh. The team have become a laughing stock in all formats.

What is clear is that Pakistan cricket is not helping itself, with flawed planning and badly thought-out decisions coming from a hierarchy that is probably the least popular in its topsy-turvy cricketing history.

The coaching problem

For example, look at the coaching staff entrusted with working with the current group of players. The interim head coach is the inexperienced Sarfaraz Ahmed, a former captain who had never coached at international level prior to the recent two-match series against the West Indies. His only coaching experience is a handful of matches with Pakistan’s Under-19s.

The fielding coach is former leg-spinner Mansoor Amjad, who specialises in batting and spin-bowling coaching. The batting coach is former South African first-class cricketer Michael Smith, who was only appointed earlier this month. Try to make sense of this.

Ahead of the tours of the Caribbean and England, there was no military boot camp to improve the players’ fitness levels and mental conditioning, as the squad infamously did in 2016. Who will ever forget the push-ups after Misbah-ul-Haq’s side defeated England by 75 runs at Lord’s? This time, ahead of the tours, there was a rather gentle training camp in Lahore – hardly the most challenging environment before facing Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson and co.

No stability

Pakistan’s domestic circuit is probably the most unpredictable in world cricket. It is anyone’s guess how many teams will take part in tournaments each year, what the number of tournaments will be or what the formats will be. Occasionally, domestic competitions commence and are cancelled at the drop of a hat.

Domestic training camps are organised with very little notice to the players, some of whom subsequently have to cancel club or franchise contracts at the last minute. In this unpredictable and chaotic world, how can one expect players to flourish, improve and establish themselves?

There is no stability within the corridors of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). Chairmen and selectors come and go. World-class coaches such as Gary Kirsten and Jason Gillespie were hired and fired in the blink of an eye.

Captaincy is a lottery and a revolving door – highly rated players are often not given a proper chance to establish themselves before they are dropped and brought back when they are past their best.

Shaheen Shah Afridi and Naseem Shah are just two victims of a complete lack of foresight. Over the years, they have been brought back to international cricket when not fully fit or needing rest, and not selected when they should have been. Neither are in England due to fitness issues, when, with proper planning, they should have been leading the Pakistan pace attack.

There is little management of players’ workloads or thought given to the formats and series for which they should be picked.

Slim pickings

Currently, talent is an overused word in Pakistan cricket. The fans keep hearing that the talent is still there. But where is it?

Worryingly, barring perhaps one or two players, the current group in England is probably the best that can be mustered. The cupboard is bare.

Gone are the eye-catching 90mph pacers that Pakistan were famous for. Gone are the match-winning unorthodox spinners. Gone are the world-class batters who were always combative in England.

There are individual players with ability, but too many lack consistency, temperament and the technical discipline needed to succeed in Test cricket. Many within the domestic circuit have no desire to play first-class cricket and would rather earn a living feasting on the riches that Twenty20 leagues provide.

Pakistan’s position in the World Test Championship underlines the seriousness of the situation. They sit bottom of the 2025-27 cycle and are eighth in the ICC Test rankings.

Predictably ordinary

It is not just the fans and media who are worried about the future of Pakistan cricket – former head coach Mickey Arthur recently stated that mediocrity is being accepted and that is why there are mediocre results. Gillespie, who labelled high-performance director Aqib Javed a clown, has stated that if the PCB had treated its previous coaches better, the team would now be in a much stronger position.

Pakistan were always known for their unpredictability, but those days are long gone. Fourteen losses in their last 19 Tests and nine losses in their last 10 away Test matches are statistics that should be ringing alarm bells at the PCB. The worrying thing is that this no longer feels like a temporary slump.

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They have been here before, though the difference now is the lack of evidence that the underlying problems are being fixed.

Their collapses have become predictable, their fielding continues to be a weakness, the pace bowlers have disappeared, the batters look distinctly average, the coaching structure lacks stability and the performances increasingly suggest a side without a clear identity.

Is the criticism deserved? Absolutely. For Pakistan fans, there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel, just the next humiliating defeat.