Pakistan Sends Rizwan, Imam Home After Lord’s Test Collapse

Pakistan’s cricket board didn’t wait for the series to finish before swinging the axe. A day after England sealed an unassailable 2-0 lead with a 194-run win at Lord’s, the PCB decided to send both Mohammad Rizwan and Imam-ul-Haq home before the third Test even begins, a mid-series expulsion that’s as much about damage control as squad management.

Rizwan’s removal traces to a specific moment fans have seized on: chasing 389 for victory, with Pakistan already 14 for 3, he was dismissed for just one run attempting to help Saud Shakeel steady the innings — the latest instance of what’s become a recurring criticism of his tendency to slog-sweep under pressure. Imam-ul-Haq’s exit is murkier and more contentious. He suffered what PCB scans described as a low-grade calf strain on day one at Lord’s and didn’t bat in the second innings; former England bowler Stuart Broad publicly questioned the injury’s legitimacy, calling Imam’s visible practice session “all for show.” The PCB is reportedly opening an investigation into the injury itself — an unusual step that suggests the board isn’t fully convinced by its own team’s medical explanation.

The reshuffle extends well beyond two players. Six replacements — including Saim Ayub, Arafat Minhas and Abdullah Fazal, alongside fast bowlers Rizwan-ul-Haq and Imran Junior, both fresh from a National Cricket Academy fast-bowling development camp — have been summoned to Birmingham for the third and final Test starting September 9 at Edgbaston. White-ball coach Mike Hesson has been handed control of all team matters for that match, a move widely read as a precursor to Hesson formally taking over the Test side full-time, with red-ball coach Sarfaraz Ahmed facing likely removal once the tour ends.

The scale of the response reflects how badly this series has gone, and how loud the criticism has become. Former Pakistan captain and wicketkeeper Rashid Latif called the PCB, under chairman Mohsin Naqvi, “the worst cricket board in 70 years” following the Lord’s defeat — a remark that lands the tour’s failures squarely at the administrative level, not just on the players being sent home. Pakistan were bowled out for 194 chasing that Lord’s target, with England’s Ollie Robinson taking 4 for 24, extending a pattern of batting collapses under pressure that’s defined the tour.

This isn’t uncharted territory for Pakistan cricket specifically against England. The team was whitewashed 3-0 by England’s “Bazball” approach under Ben Stokes and Brendon McCullum in a previous series, and Thursday’s moves suggest the board has stopped treating individual poor performances as isolated incidents and started treating them as symptoms of a deeper structural problem — one urgent enough to justify pulling players mid-series rather than waiting for a post-tour review.

Whether the Birmingham reshuffle produces a competitive final Test or simply confirms the scale of the collapse will be clear within two weeks — but the coaching and personnel decisions being made now look set to outlast this series regardless of Edgbaston’s result.