PCB Planning to Send Cricketers to US for Power-Hitting Training
By Sayed Abdullah | June 25, 2026
The idea sounds like something from a different sport altogether. Pakistani cricketers, in the middle of a packed international calendar, being sent to the United States to study power hitting. Not to England, not to Australia, but to a country where baseball has always been the dominant language of bat meeting ball. White-ball coach Mike Hesson confirmed the plan on Tuesday, and while the details are still being finalised, the intent is clear. The PCB wants its players to learn something that cannot be taught by watching video footage or facing the same bowlers in the nets in Lahore. It wants them to leave the comfort zone entirely. Four months in one place. New methods. New voices. A different kind of training. The kind that might turn a good power hitter into a great one.
Pakistan cricket has never been short of talent. But talent, Hesson seems to be saying, needs to be exposed to ideas it has not yet encountered.
The Full Story
Hesson spoke to a media outlet about the programme in deliberately broad terms. "We're sending some players to the US," he said, before expanding on the rationale. "There's some power-hitting expertise over there, and we're exploring some options. We've got some players who've had some longer-term injuries, and players we want to expose to different methods of power hitting and just a different learning environment, spending four months in one place to get some new fresh ideas." The collaboration, he added, is not simply about strength and conditioning. "It's certainly not just strength and conditioning," he said. The implication is that the American approach to bat speed, to the biomechanics of generating power from the hips and shoulders, to the split-second decision-making that a power hitter needs when facing 140 kilometres an hour — all of this might be studied differently in a country where hitting a fast-moving ball is a science refined over generations. Not cricket balls, maybe. But the principles are closer than they appear.
The man Hesson trusts to lead the physical transformation of the squad is Javed Mughal, a UK-based physiotherapist who was appointed the PCB's director of sports and exercise medicine earlier this year. Mughal has been central to a broader overhaul of the board's medical and fitness culture, and his approach is already reshaping how players are assessed. At a press conference alongside PCB chief Mohsin Naqvi, he described fitness as "non-negotiable" in professional sports and said the board had developed a robust, reliable, and repeatable testing and screening battery. That language — "non-negotiable" — is the kind of phrase that gets said a lot in Pakistani cricket and then quietly abandoned when a senior player fails a fitness test. Hesson and Mughal seem to be betting that this time will be different.
Among the players expected to be considered for the US programme is Under-19 fast bowler Ali Raza, the 18-year-old who has drawn considerable attention as one of Pakistan's most exciting white-ball pace prospects. He was part of the Pakistan side that won the 50-over U19 Asia Cup, where he took 4-42 in the final against India — a spell that included the wicket of Vaibhav Suryavanshi, a name now famous for reasons beyond his batting. Earlier this year, Raza also took a hat-trick for Peshawar Zalmi in the PSL. He has not yet made his international debut, though he has been included in Pakistan's Asian Games squad. Hesson's assessment of Raza was direct. "We're trying to get Ali Raza fit and strong enough to deal with the demands of international cricket. It's tough trying to be able to bowl multiple spells and sustain his pace. We know when he's at his top-end pace, he's exciting. But when the pressure ramps up, the pressures on the body ramp up. So he's got to work on his body so he can deal with those." The US programme, then, is not just for batters. It is for anyone whose body needs to be remade for the demands of elite competition. A young fast bowler learning how to hold his pace through a fourth spell might benefit from the same biomechanical expertise that teaches a batter how to clear a boundary with a flick of the wrists.
Hesson also pushed back on the recurring criticism that Pakistan suffers from an unusually high rate of pace bowling injuries. "Pace bowling wise, there's no more injuries than there are anywhere else in the world," he said. The statement was brief, but it carried the weight of someone who has worked in multiple cricketing environments and who is tired of the narrative that Pakistani fast bowlers are uniquely fragile. The US programme, in that context, is not an admission of failure. It is an investment in prevention. Send the players before they break down. Teach them how to manage their bodies before the injuries happen. That is a shift in thinking, and it is overdue.
Why This Moment Matters
The US programme is not happening in isolation. Pakistan face a demanding stretch of cricket in the months ahead. A two-Test series in the West Indies begins on July 25. A three-Test tour of England follows on August 19. Beyond those assignments, the 2027 ODI World Cup — to be held in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia from October 4 to November 21 — is firmly on the radar. The tournament that Hesson has already spoken about extensively, and that he has argued requires a squad capable of adapting to a wide range of conditions, is now less than eighteen months away. Every decision made between now and then — every training camp, every selection call, every fitness test — will be made with that tournament in mind. The US programme is part of that preparation. A four-month immersion in a new training environment is not something you do for marginal gains. It is something you do when you believe the existing methods have reached their ceiling.
There is also a cultural dimension worth noting. Pakistani cricket has often been insular, relying on its own traditions and its own experts. The idea of sending players to America — a country with no Test cricket history, no first-class structure, no obvious cricketing pedigree — will be met with scepticism in some quarters. Hesson seems aware of that, and he addressed it indirectly by emphasising the value of fresh ideas. "I think it's good that we're looking at exploring those options, rather than saying 'no, you have to stay here,'" he said. That sentence is more revealing than it might appear. It suggests that there are voices within the system who would prefer the players to stay home, train in familiar surroundings, and not risk the unknown. Hesson is pushing against those voices. The US programme is not just a training initiative. It is a statement about how the coach believes cricket should be run.
The Pakistani Connection
I was talking to a friend who coaches at a cricket academy in Nazimabad a few weeks ago, yaar. He told me something that has stayed with me. Pakistani batsmen, he said, learn to hit sixes by watching YouTube compilations and trying to copy what they see. There is no systematic approach to power hitting. No biomechanics. No data on bat speed or launch angle. Just instinct and repetition. That approach has produced some of the most naturally gifted players in the world. But it has also left gaps — players who can dominate in domestic conditions but struggle on bouncier pitches, who can clear the boundary against spin but get caught in the deep against pace, whose bodies break down because they were never taught how to manage the load. The US programme, if it works, could begin to fill those gaps. It will not turn a mediocre player into a world-beater. But it might turn a player who is almost good enough into a player who is. And at the elite level, that is the difference that matters.
For Ali Raza, the young fast bowler who might spend four months in America before he has even played an international match, the programme is an extraordinary opportunity. He will be exposed to training methods that most Pakistani cricketers never encounter. He will learn about his body — how it moves, how it recovers, how it breaks — before the international calendar puts it under stress. That is a gift. And it is a gift that the PCB, for all its past failings, seems to be trying to give to a generation of players who might otherwise have been left to figure it out on their own. The results will not be visible overnight. But the thinking behind the programme is sound. And in Pakistani cricket, where short-term thinking has so often dominated, that alone is worth noting.
Do you think sending players to the US for power-hitting training will actually improve Pakistan's white-ball performance, or is it just a gimmick? I would like to hear what fans think.
Sayed Abdullah is the founder and editor of Prime Pakistan. Based in Karachi, he writes about sports and the stories that connect Pakistan to the world. Read more.
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Sources
- Mike Hesson interview — Public comments on the US training programme and player fitness.
- PCB press conferences — Statements by Mohsin Naqvi and Javed Mughal on the medical and fitness overhaul.
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