“There were certainly challenges. I went into the job eyes wide open, I want to make that really clear. I knew that, you know, Pakistan had cycled through a number of coaches in a pretty short space of time.
“The straw that broke the camel’s back, I suppose, was, as a head coach, you like to have clear communication with your employer,” Gillespie told ABC Sport. “I was completely and utterly blindsided by a decision to not have a high-performance coach,” he added.
“Tim Nielsen was told that his services were no longer required and I had absolutely zero communication from anyone about that,” Gillespie said. “And I just thought after a number of other things that had gone on in the previous few months, that was probably the moment where I thought, ‘Well, I’m not really sure if they actually want me to do this job or not.'”
Adding to Gillespie’s frustration was the fact that the feedback given to him regarding Nielsen and the team’s performance was positive.
“I developed a really close relationship with the Test captain, Shan Masood, and felt we were certainly going in the right direction and things were going really well,” he said. “All the feedback that I’d got or the feedback the PCB got was just how effective, you know, Tim had been in his role as well and the players were getting a lot out of him.”
Gillespie guided Pakistan to a 2-1 win against England in October, after losing the first match by an innings and 47 runs. However after the loss in the first Test, he was informed that a new selection panel would be introduced, and he would not be a part of it.
“I felt I was basically hitting catches and that was about it on the morning of a game,” he said. “You want to be able to have clear communication with all stakeholders, with selectors, for instance, knowing what the team is as head coach well before the game, or before at least the day before the game.
