Six foreign coaches, including two former English international players, have been hired to work with the domestic teams for the upcoming domestic season, which will get underway this week with the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) announced on Sunday.
Paul Franks, a former England international with extensive coaching experience, will serve as Central Punjab’s head coach. Franks, 43, is a native of Nottinghamshire. On July 20, 2000, he participated in one One Day International match, which was against the West Indies. In 215 first-class games, he recorded 524 wickets as a right-arm bowler. He batted left-handed and racked up 7185 runs at an average of 27.95 in 215 first-class games.
Paul Nixon, a former left-handed stumper for England with 19 ODI experience, will train with Sindh. The left-handed hitter, who was born in Cumberland, amassed 297 runs in ODIs. He also participated in a T20 international game.
Nixon is now the head coach of Leicestershire and led the Jamaican Tallawahs to two CPL championships. In the upcoming days, he will step down from the position before departing for Pakistan to begin the new task.
Fielding coaches will be John Sadler (Sindh) and Bilal Shafayat (Central Punjab). Strength and conditioning coaches include Richard Stonier from Central Punjab and Ian Fisher from Sindh, both of whom are from England.
Richard Stonier was a member of the Bangladesh Under-19 side that triumphed at the 2020 ICC Under-19 World Cup in South Africa. Paul Franks, the head coach of Central Punjab, remarked, “We have tremendous talent all throughout. It will be great to see everyone. I genuinely enjoy coaching when it is done for the correct reasons.
The players are everything, and I am very enthusiastic about the upcoming months here in Pakistan. I’ve been to Pakistan before; in the late 1990s, I travelled there with England U19. I enjoyed the zeal for the game back when I was a very young man just starting out. But I’ve always told myself that I’ll want to return eventually.”
Pakistan is a beautiful destination to play cricket, and who wouldn’t want the opportunity to come to Pakistan,” remarked Sindh head coach Paul Nixon. The Sindh team has recently played so well in T20 matches, in my opinion.
They’ve been excellent, and their ratio of youth to experience is simply amazing. They have some intriguing international cricketers as well as some incredibly bright young people developing.
