ACB Appoint Richard Pybus as National Team Head Coach

Kabul, February 24, 2026: The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) is pleased to announce the appointment of Richard Pybus as the Head Coach of the Afghanistan National Team. He will join AfghanAtalan ahead of the upcoming white-ball series against Sri Lanka in March.

Richard Pybus is a globally respected cricket leader and performance director with a distinguished international coaching career. He is a three-time ICC Cricket World Cup-winning Head Coach & Director of Cricket and brings a wealth of elite-level experience and a proven record of building high-performance systems.

His recognized coaching journey includes serving as Head Coach, Director of Cricket, and Head of High Performance for the West Indies cricket team from 2013 to 2019. During this period, he designed and managed the high-performance structure that led to a historic treble of ICC World Cup victories in 2016, when the West Indies Men’s, Women’s, and U19 teams all secured world titles in a single calendar year, which marked the first in the history of international cricket.

Previously, Pybus served as Head Coach of the Pakistan National Cricket Team and guided the side to the ICC Cricket World Cup Final in 1999, which they lost to Australia. He has also held a senior leadership role with the Bangladesh Cricket in 2013. Domestically, he has a strong coaching record in South African domestic & franchise cricket, where the teams under his guidance secured nine championship titles, which is also a national record. Additionally, he was named South African Cricket Coach of the Year twice.

He has also played a significant role in the development of individual players, including Pakistan’s Mohammad Rizwan and South Africa’s Faf Du Plessis. Additionally, he worked with Dale Steyn and helped him become one of the greatest bowlers in the history of cricket.

Beyond his on-field accomplishments, Pybus is a highly respected academic and performance strategist. In 2022, he received a Doctorate in Professional Practice from Middlesex University in London in recognition of his research on the principles behind the “Optimal Performance System.” This framework is designed to achieve consistent and winning results across various cultures and high-performance environments.

In addition to his Doctorate, Pybus holds a postgraduate degree from Greenwich University in London and a BA Hons degree from Portsmouth University in the UK.

He is a Level Four CSA Certified Coach and has an Executive Coaching Certificate from the Neuroleadership Institute. Furthermore, he is a Certified Performance Coach and a Master's Level NLP Practitioner.

Afghanistan Cricket Board warmly welcomes Richard Pybus and wishes him success in his new role as Head Coach of the Afghanistan National Team.

-ENDS-

For further information, please contact:

Commercial Department

Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB)

Email: Marketing@Afghancricket.af

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