Pakistan sack Lawson

The Pakistan Cricket Board sack their national coach Geoff Lawson after 15 months in the former Australian paceman took the job.

The Pakistan cricket coach Geoff Lawson calls the cricketer Yonus Khan during a team practice session in Karachi.

The Pakistan Cricket Board sacked their national coach Geoff Lawson today, just 15 months after the former Australian paceman took up the position, the board's spokesman said. "Geoff Lawson has been sacked. He has been given three months' severance pay," the PCB spokesman Raza Rashid said. The move comes just three days after the new PCB chairman Ijaz Butt said Lawson's contract would not be renewed next year, on the grounds that Pakistan had "no utility" for him.

Lawson, 50, was appointed Pakistan coach in July last year after Pakistan's first-round defeat in the World Cup in the Caribbean in March. Calls for his removal intensified when Pakistan lost to Sri Lanka in the final of the T20 four-nation event in Canada earlier this month. Butt had said that Lawson could not be instantly removed for financial reasons. Pakistan must now look for a new coach before a Test series against India at home in January-February next year.

*AFP