KARACHI: Pakistan are set to appoint experienced South African Mickey Arthur for a second stint as head coach, a top cricket board official said on Monday.
The 54-year-old will replace Saqlain Mushtaq, whose contract expires next month.
“I am in negotiations with Mickey personally and we have covered 90 percent of the issues,” Najam Sethi, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board’s management committee, said.
“Hopefully, very soon we may give you the news that Mickey will be joining us,” he told a press conference in Lahore.
Sethi said Arthur will have his own team of support staff.
“I think the issues will be solved in the next two to three days and Mickey will come with support staff,” added Sethi.
Under Arthur’s tenure as head coach between 2016 and 2019, Pakistan won the Champions Trophy and became number one in the Twenty20 international rankings.
But his contract was not renewed after Pakistan failed to reach the semifinals of the 2019 World Cup.
Arthur is currently serving as head coach of Derbyshire in England on a three-year contract.
He has vast experience, having also coached his native South Africa, Australia and Sri Lanka.
Pakistan cricket is going through a number of changes after PCB chairman Ramiz Raja was removed last month.
Raja was replaced by a 14-member committee led by Sethi.
Former batsman Haroon Rasheed was also appointed as chief selector, replacing Shahid Afridi, who served on an interim basis for one month.
Mickey Arthur set to rejoin as Pakistan head coach
https://arab.news/45g9y
Mickey Arthur set to rejoin as Pakistan head coach
- 54-year-old will replace Saqlain Mushtaq whose contract expires next month
- PCB chief Najam Sethi says Arthur will have his own team of support staff
Three Afghan migrants die crossing into Iran as UN warns of new displacement toward Pakistan
- UNHCR says 1.8 million Afghans were forced to return from Iran this year, straining Afghanistan’s resources
- Rights groups warn forced refugee returns risk harm as Afghanistan faces food shortages and climate shocks
KABUL: Three Afghans died from exposure in freezing temperatures in the western province of Herat while trying to illegally enter Iran, a local army official said on Saturday.
“Three people who wanted to illegally cross the Iran-Afghanistan border have died because of the cold weather,” the Afghan army official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He added that a shepherd was also found dead in the mountainous area of Kohsan from the cold.
The migrants were part of a group that attempted to cross into Iran on Wednesday and was stopped by Afghan border forces.
“Searches took place on Wednesday night, but the bodies were only found on Thursday,” the army official said.
More than 1.8 million Afghans were forced to return to Afghanistan by the Iranian authorities between January and the end of November 2025, according to the latest figures from the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), which said that the majority were “forced and coerced returns.”
“These mass returns in adverse circumstances have strained Afghanistan’s already overstretched resources and services” which leads to “risks of onward and new displacement, including return movements back into Pakistan and Iran and onward,” UNHCR posted on its site dedicated to Afghanistan’s situation.
This week, Amnesty International called on countries to stop forcibly returning people to Afghanistan, citing a “real risk of serious harm for returnees.”
Hit by two major earthquakes in recent months and highly vulnerable to climate change, Afghanistan faces multiple challenges.
It is subject to international sanctions particularly due to the exclusion of women from many jobs and public places, described by the UN as “gender apartheid.”
More than 17 million people in the country are facing acute food insecurity, the UN World Food Program said Tuesday.
