"I like to deal with facts rather than fiction, and there's a lot of narrative around the statement you've made."
Mike Hesson is by and large a mild-mannered man, but a distinct hardness works its way into his voice when he bristles. It has been a generally amiable chat at the National Cricket Academy (NCA), a sprawling gated compound with crisply manicured gardens within the Gaddafi Stadium complex. It's where Hesson's office is located, with a long racetrack table in the middle, and a well-used whiteboard in the back, which looks to have been freshly scrubbed. Hesson was using it as part of his job training local coaches at the NCA.
But it is the international coaching role which has brought the itinerant New Zealander to Pakistan. He appears to have a mandate till late 2027, when the ODI World Cup will take place, one that, whichever way it goes, will likely end up shaping his legacy in this country.
What he's rebuffing is the notion of inexorable decline within Pakistan cricket, and the contention that his arrival may have failed to sufficiently stall it. "In the Asia Cup last year, for example, we won every game except against India," Hesson tells Cricinfo. "The reality is every single team in the world is struggling to beat India at the moment. Every team, not just Pakistan. Rightly or wrongly, Pakistan are gauged by how they perform against India. And at the moment, India is not only the best team; they're the best team by a mile.
"At the T20 World Cup, we lost to England in the Super 8 off the back of a Harry Brook hundred and a very tight game outside of that. We won every [other] game except India. From 2023-2025, we didn't make it out of the pool in ICC events. So you can't go from eighth in the world to all of a sudden competing unless you start winning more regular games of cricket. And for us to go from winning 20-odd per cent to close to three-quarters of our games in a year is significant."
For Hesson, a man whose coaching career has followed an almost unique path, the process matters immensely. As we speak, the Pakistan men's white-ball and red-ball sides are holding a summer camp in Lahore in the midst of a blistering heatwave. It's come at the end of a year when Pakistan's white-ball results, as Hesson points out, have ticked upwards, especially in bilateral and tri-nation series. Since Hesson took over, Pakistan have won two T20I tri-series, and lost just one of six bilaterial T20I series. Pakistan's ODI record is slightly more mixed, but it still includes wins over South Africa, Australia and Sri Lanka.
It is true that South Africa and Australia did not send their best teams, but Hesson says all Pakistan can do is control their own performance and focus on improving it. And there is a lot to improve in Pakistan.
"The reality is when someone comes new into a job, they very rarely take over a team at the top of their game," Hesson says. "I took over Otago, [who] hadn't won a trophy for 20 years, [and they] won trophies. New Zealand, we obviously made some improvements, also with RCB [Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the IPL] and things are moving in the right direction there. Pakistan is similar to New Zealand in many ways. But it will take time. It took probably two-and-a-half to three years from a white-ball perspective to really turn things around with New Zealand, and then there was some ongoing success for the next three or four years.
"But to do that you actually have to hold your nerve and in New Zealand it's easier because there's less players, you know, so the depth is less. You know in larger countries, bigger player pools, the ability to hold your never and focus your talent on a smaller group of players is hard, because it's really hard to develop a hundred players. Far easier to develop 20."
Hesson's stock grew in Pakistan not just through his international portfolio, but the work he did in two years at Islamabad United. He was appointed coach of the PSL franchise in 2024, leading them to their first title in six years in his inaugural season. It was that sort of immediate bounce the famously impatient PCB were after when he was offered the job, shortly after two previous overseas coaches, Gary Kirsten and Jason Gillespie, fell out with the board and resigned early into their stints.
But Hesson is dismissive of the idea that kind of instant turnaround in fortunes was ever possible at national level. "You can recruit in franchises," he says simply. "The standard [between PSL and international cricket] is different. So to think that someone's going to replicate what they do in PSL on the international stage in a variety of conditions, completely different pressures is very unrealistic."
Pakistan have, however made the most concerted effort in a long-time to streamline their player pool. Last week, he found himself in the slightly unusual position of talking up the importance of Test cricket in Pakistan, when the PCB came up with a completely overhauled central contract system. Once they come into effect, they are set to reward specialist Test cricketers with significantly improved financial packages, which come at the expense of closing down T20 franchise opportunities for those players.
Hesson, seated alongside PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi and director of cricket Aqib Javed, was most effusive about the document outlining the new structure, saying it could potentially become the "envy of the cricketing world." His previous international employer, New Zealand, tried allowing players to represent New Zealand with casual contracts instead of signing up to full-time central contracts; Trent Boult and Kane Williamson were among a few to play the last few years of their international careers under that arrangement. But Hesson doesn't think it's been a success, saying New Zealand have realised it doesn't work and has "upset many people".
"When I talk about it being an envy of nations, at least we've tried to fit a model within the current environment rather than have an arbitrary model that used to work 10 years ago and just rolling it over and then all of a sudden we'll give someone a casual contract or we'll get someone a red-ball contract or whatever.
"Every team around the world are trying to find a model that can realistically give Test cricket some value. Most players around the world that play all three forms still consider Test cricket the pinnacle. Contracts don't often align with that. To compare a Test match opening batsman with a guy that bowls in the Powerplay, in the death, in T20 cricket, you know, comparing them in the same model is unfair. To be able to compare people in the format they're playing and the value that they add to the team is far more realistic."
To that end, Pakistan will, at least officially, do away with the concept of all-format players, funnelling them through either the red- or white-ball track, with match fees to top them up if selected in a format outside their contract structure. While it's still not fully clear what choice a player has in the formats they choose, the purpose of the contracts is fairly obvious: keeping the players the PCB values most within Test cricket, and out of the franchise circuit's clutches.
Hesson says player performances will be put into the analytical model the PCB have prepared which will "spit out" what format a player's performances prime them for. However, he acknowledges the PCB will likely need to continue to use the leverage of No-Objection Certificates to keep players they don't want going into the T20 circuit. "I don't think you can ever compete with someone being elite in a franchise. No country's model is ever going to be able to allow for that." But, as he points out, "there are very few players in that category anywhere in the world." In Pakistan, currently, there are none.
It is also unclear what the players themselves think of this revolutionising of their central contracts. Frankly though, in the current climate at the PCB, it doesn't especially matter, with Naqvi calling the shots and leaving little wiggle room for negotiatiation. That doesn't automatically mean the contracts are unfair in any way but allows Pakistan to proceed with an experiment a nation without such top-down leadership would struggle to get off the ground.
However, Hesson does have ideas on how to help evolve Pakistan's leadership culture. He is, after all, associated with one of the more famous - and contentious - changes of captaincy in recent memory, when Ross Taylor was removed and replaced with Brendon McCullum, who went on to build perhaps New Zealand's greatest side.
Pakistan is perhaps more accustomed to controversial switches of captaincy than any other side in cricket, and though Hesson does not get a final say in who leads the team, he sees shaping how the captaincy works as one of his central jobs. Late last year, Mohammad Rizwan was unceremoniously dumped as ODI captain via a brief press release announcing Shaheen as captain, with the PCB statement making no mention of thanks to the outgoing leader.
"We're trying to work on having multiple leaders in a team," he says. "The culture is more a telling culture rather than a cohesive developing culture. What tends to happen is you're captain and then you're not and then, you go from making every decision to not making any decisions. We're trying to change that. When Agha was captain of the T20s he had a number of players that he could lean on and off the field, and we'll do the same with Shaheen as well."
The last overseas coach to have this kind of influence and longevity at the PCB was Mickey Arthur, though Hesson does point out a distinction between Arthur's softer side and his own approach ("there are times when you can't be a "softly, softly" coach," he says flatly). With eyes turning to the ODI World Cup, which could well be Hesson's last involvement with Pakistan, plans are already afoot.
Pakistan are already looking for a seam-bowling allrounder for that tournament, one to supplement, if not replace, Faheem Ashraf, who has struggled to fulfil the role in ODI cricket. Where one comes from is less clear, but that is part of the point of holding these camps and playing as much domestic cricket as Pakistan do, waiting, as Hesson says, for "somebody to put their hand up".
He's keen to work more on Pakistan's mental fortitude, concerned that his side tend to fall into fatalistic patterns against sides that have dominated them in the recent past. But he also promises on-field changes; while the surfaces against Australia were painfully slow, Hesson says groundsmen will be told to produce strips to replicate what Pakistan might face in South Africa, where the bulk of the World Cup will be held.
The task ahead might look enormous in scale, but Hesson does not think it should necessarily temper expectations for that tournament. The ODI World Cup has not been a happy hunting ground for Pakistan this century; they have made just one semi-final in six editions, and have been knocked out in the first round in four of the last six tournaments.
"Like any team, we arrive at a World Cup and we're trying to win the World Cup. We're no different. But we know in order to do that, we have to play consistent cricket throughout to be able to qualify past the group stage. Every team I've been with and every team that's been successful hasn't ever thought too far ahead. You can't win the World Cup before you play your first game. But our expectations are no different than anyone else."