I’m glad to hear that my old friend Intikhab (Alam) is the new Pakistan coach and it's right that we now have a local coach again, though Geoff Lawson was a little unfortunate.

I never agreed with the appointment of Geoff Lawson in the first place as I felt he did not have the sufficient experience and was not even coach of New South Wales before he was hired by Pakistan. I felt we should have recruited Dav Whatmore then.

But once Geoff was given the job it is probably hard on him that he was sacked after we played hardly any matches; just teams like Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, so he did not have many opportunities to prove himself.   

However, I do agree that we needed a Pakistani at the helm again and I would think that because the Pakistan Cricket Board is not making much money at the moment, Intikhab would not have been as expensive as an overseas coach. Intikhab will do a good job, he will have the respect of the players and he knows the game.

He has a gentle nature, won’t alienate the players yet he has a shrewd cricket brain. He will instill discipline into the team but in the right way.

Like me, and Javed Miandad less so, we are players from a different era who never played Twenty20 or anything like that but cricket is sometimes overcomplicated and it is still the same game whatever the format. Intikhab will be able to read the situation of a game or a player’s technique and advise as good as anybody.

I think Miandad would have made an even better coach but he does not have the man management skills that Inti has, which is a shame because he has an excellent cricket brain and is a very hard-working fellow.

With the new PCB chairman Ejaz Butt, with Salim Altaf returning as a chief official on the PCB and now with a new coach it could become an exciting time for Pakistan. I would like to become part of it myself. Maybe as a head of the national academy, coaching the Under-19s or A team, or even as team manager like Talat Ali was before. I have played 57 Tests, captained the team for three years, coached the team on three separate occasions when we reached the World Cup final so I like to think I have a lot to offer the captain and coach. Some interesting times lie ahead.   

Mushtaq Mohammed played 57 Tests for Pakistan between 1959 and 1979.

Send in your comments on this column or on a related topic to fans@bigstarcricket.com and see them published on the website