India, March 21 -- Gary Kirsten did not need many words to describe his time with Pakistan. "I was the lowest-hanging fruit," he said, reflecting on a coaching stint that had begun with promise and ended in a familiar frustration. It was a statement sharp enough to travel on its own, but it also carried a larger truth about Pakistan cricket.

Kirsten's bitterness was not really about one broken assignment. It was about the kind of system in which the coach is forever vulnerable because almost everything around him is unstable - the decision-making, the hierarchy, the power centres, and even the captain himself.

Gary Kirsten's account lands with force because it fits a pattern that has been visible in Pakistan cricket for some time. His r...