Coach selected based on skin color: Raja exposes Sethi’s low-level mindset

Former PCB chairman, Ramiz Raja, has criticized the appointment of Grant Bradburn as the head coach of the Pakistan national men's cricket team.

Bradburn will lead the team’s coaching panel for the next two years.

Raja's comments came in response to a statement made by Najam Sethi, PCB management committee chairman, regarding local coaches.

“Local coaches are not professional coaches. Superstars in Pakistan can't be coaching players, a foreign coach won't do nepotism and favoritism but our local coaches do that because it's in our culture,” Sethi had said back in December, 2022.

Raja argued that it was unjust to overlook Pakistani coaches entirely, and even if they were not hired, they should still be given respect. He disagreed with Sethi's assertion that local coaches engaged in politics and were useless.

"It is injustice to not make use of Pakistani coaches. If you don’t want to hire, then at least give respect them. You can’t say they do politics and are useless,” Raja said.

The 60-year-old also questioned Bradburn's lack of experience in the cricket circuit and accused the PCB of selecting him solely based on his skin color. He deemed this line of thinking as indicative of a low-level mindset.

"They [PCB] have selected a head coach, who has no experience anywhere else in the cricket circuit. PCB have handed him our whole team, just because his skin colour is different than ours, so they believe he won’t do any politics. A person with a low-level mindset can think like that,” he said.

Raja emphasized the need to respect the local system and coaches, cautioning against assuming that a coach of the same skin color would automatically engage in politics.

"Respect your system and coaches. Just because, if the coach has the same skin color as yours, don’t assume he would do politics,” he concluded.