Jason Gillespie is in Faisalabad, known as the Manchester of Pakistan because of its links to the cotton trade. As probably the most anglicised Australian cricketer, it feels an appropriate place for a chat as he prepares to meet England in his role as the new head coach of the Pakistan Test team.

Gillespie has already had a baptism of fire. His team lost their first series on his watch at home to Bangladesh in August, a 2-0 clean sweep that brought some bruising realities to the surface.

It is three years since Pakistan won a home Test match — a run of 10 matches — and now they meet an England team that walloped them 3-0 on their own pitches in 2022. They are eighth in the ICC Test rankings.

So Gillespie has not chosen an easy posting for his first job in international cricket. “It’s been a tough initiation, and Pakistan haven’t been playing well for a while now. Look, it’s a challenge. There’s no doubt about that, but it’s an exciting one,” he tells Telegraph Sport from Faisalabad where he was overseeing a training camp before heading to Multan to prepare for the first Test.

He left his job with his home state South Australia to take the Pakistan role, accepting a split-format coaching set-up (Gary Kirsten is the white-ball coach) because it allows him more time at home.

Rich experience in the English game

After five years at Yorkshire, whom he led to two county championship titles, and stints at Sussex and Kent, he knows the English game inside out. He was close to landing the England job in 2015 but was pipped at the last interview by Trevor Bayliss, and it has taken almost a decade for another opportunity to come along in international cricket.

There is only so much influence the coach of the Pakistan team can have in a cricket set-up dominated by politics and with the hand of the national government never far away from decision making. There have been six permanent or temporary head coaches since 2022 but Gillespie’s appointment suggests the flux is over.

He knows he will be judged quickly, with patience thin on the ground in Pakistan cricket. And he will be looking at England in this series for some guidance, recognising how Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes quickly gave the team clarity of approach and ignited interest in the team as a result.

“England get it wrong sometimes and have their ups and downs. But I suppose the one thing they have managed to do is have an identity, haven’t they? The way they want to play, which is half the battle.

“I was really conscious of coming into this job that I didn’t want to come in and say, ‘this is how we’re going to play’. You know, the foreign coach coming in and just dictating terms. It’s not right. It’s collaborative. I want us to sit down and thrash it out, discuss, ‘how do we want to be seen? What do we stand for? How do we want to go about things?’

“And we’ve had some really good, open discussions with the playing group. The key themes that keep coming out for us is being brave, be selfless. It’s a team game. Let’s do the team things. Let’s be brave, let’s be positive. It’s not being reckless, we just need to play better.”

Pakistan are captained by Yorkshire’s Shan Masood, and he and Gillespie have instantly hit it off. “He’s very clear with how he wants our Test side to play. We want to be progressive and take the game on and take the game to the opposition. So we certainly want to drive games forward. Shan and I are very aligned.”

Masood has led Pakistan in five Tests, losing them all, but his team have batted slightly quicker on his watch at 3.35 an over and at 3.5 in their last 11 matches overall. Not exactly Bazball but there is the intention to be more aggressive. However, important players, including Masood and Babar Azam, are struggling for form and the selectors faced criticism for not freshening up the squad after the Bangladesh loss.

Masood has had to publicly deny there are any issues within the dressing room. They do have fit quicks in Naseem Shah, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Mohammad Hasnain, which could tip the balance on dead pitches but also be potentially expensive as the Bazballers like pace on the ball.

“We know how England are going to play and that’s cool. That’s fine,” says Gillespie. “We want to make sure that we’re playing as disciplined, consistent cricket as we can and just stay patient.

“We know England are going to go hard. But if we can just keep hanging in there, keep being disciplined, strike at the right moments, go for the gap, so to speak, and get on top in games then we can mix it with really good teams.”

Multan heat could melt unseasoned England

The first two Tests of a three-match series will be played in Multan, starting on Monday; a venue change due to building work in Lahore and Karachi. It will be like Covid times for England, playing consecutive Tests on the same ground and confined to their hotels, not for pandemic reasons but security.

Multan is not an easy place for Westerners to visit. Supporters and the media are not allowed to leave hotels without an armed guard and the players will be even more strictly protected. The stadium in Multan does have the best facilities in the country but has not hosted a Test since a Mark Wood spell blew Pakistan away in 2022.

It was a flat, lifeless pitch then and it is unlikely to have changed. The temperature is forecast to soar to 41C over the course of next week, quite the change for English cricketers coming off the back of a chilly September at home and with barely a few days to acclimatise.

So, really, Pakistan should be favourites but their own dismal form and churn at board level makes this a series for England to lose. “Look, it would be wonderful to beat England. And we know we’ve got work to do, but we see this as a wonderful opportunity,” says Gillespie.

“We certainly think that we match up OK against England and we’re grateful England are coming here for a three-Test series. It’s great for the game of Test cricket. There’ll be a lot of interest in this series.

“I’m very confident that we’ve got good-quality players. We just need to show our faith and our belief in them, and we need to show a bit of patience.

“There is such scrutiny with cricket being such an important part of society here in Pakistan, which I’m learning. Cricket is the only sport, so everyone hangs on every single game that’s played, and rides the emotions of that all the time.”