Top 50 Mickey Arthur Quotes

After my dismissal, I received nothing in writing from Cricket Australia, no contact, and no payment at all, not even of my basic leave pay, until I was forced to bring in lawyers to assist in the process.

I have never seen or heard anything to do with match-fixing in my time.

When I took charge of Pakistan, I stopped and had a look from the outside before making any judgement calls. I got used to the culture because I think that is so important. For you to move a team forward as a coach, you have to understand the culture.

Team is all about vision, goal and ambition… It’s about wanting to be the best you can be as a group.

I have never tried to hide my ambition to work in county cricket one day.

I’ve always tried to grow people rather than cricketers.

Technically your best player should be batting at No. 3.

Coaching England is a huge job, and no ambitious coach would rule himself out completely.

When I lost the job with Cricket Australia, I almost felt I had unfinished business to do. I felt that my reputation with South Africa and internationally had been very good. And then you lose your coaching job, it is tough. It kept me three years out of it.

That unpredictability tag always sort of hangs around the Pakistan team, but that makes us very exciting as well.

I have high expectations from Babar Azam and Imam-ul Haq.

I was telling somebody the other day that I have had five semi-finals with South Africa and never got to a final. I got to one final with Pakistan and eventually got a medal!

Australia always play their cricket really hard.

I’ve got a very soft spot for Mohammad Amir. As a person and as a cricketer, I admire him greatly.

Fielding is about attitude and wanting to get out there and get it done.

Cricket is 24/7 for me.

England’s full of cricket tradition. I follow the game there hugely.

If you can’t field you can’t play for Pakistan. It’s as simple as that.

I have to say that I have developed a real passion for Pakistan cricket.

I’m going to give international cricket one more crack. The Pakistan job seems like a perfect fit.

The backing I have received form the PCB is second to none. They have allowed me to do what I want to do for the best. I really think that we are on the right track. I am loving this Pakistan job.

It happens so quick. You lose a game; you lose another game; it’s a World Cup; media scrutiny; public expectation, and then you almost go into sort of survival mode. We’ve all been there.

Captains need to lead well and play within the laws of the game. There cannot be any compromise on that count.

PCB (Pakistan Cricket Board) is doing an unbelievable job in trying to resurrect international cricket. I just hope the World XI tour goes ahead and that will almost be the curtain raiser to, hopefully, get some international cricket back.

I don’t think you’ve ever coached till you’ve coached an Asian team.

When you are coaching an international team, you are running a programme for 12 months of the year. You get to influence peoples’ careers.

When you win, that’s what you’re expected to do and when you lose, people get on your back.

I’d always felt the Australian cricketers’ behaviour had been appalling. Tampering the ball too constitutes poor behaviour.

Pakistan is a great team to be a part of and to see the emergence of young players is exciting.

It’s runs for batsmen which is the criteria for selection and similarly, it is wickets for bowlers which are important.

Make no mistake, I’m a huge admirer of Faheem Ashraf, and I said so in England.

I do bring an intimate knowledge of the South African team. I know the little idiosyncrasies of each of them.

You ask the guys in the dressing room, I am a very bad loser.

I am a big fan of the five-bowler strategy.

For Pakistan cricket to stay relevant and strong, the best players have to be available all the time – it’s a challenge faced by everyone, but one that particularly relates to us because of our mainly amateur, pretty random, and certainly too thinly spread domestic structure that feeds the national team.

I am changing the culture in this Pakistan environment and I am not interested in players doing just the bare minimum. I want players winning us games of cricket and pushing themselves to be the best they can be.

I enjoy seeing young players given the opportunity and then perform and go on to have fulfilling careers.

Fitness is amplified in one-day cricket – fielding, running ones, twos, threes. Sometimes in an over you are running six twos. If you are not fit enough, you can’t run those runs.

I’ve never been a massive advocate of international Twenty20 cricket except a World Cup every two or three years, because that gets the best players together.

I think Pakistan was always a destination where it was hard to come and win. I was the coach of the South African team which came here in 2007. We won the Test and one-day series and that was a massive win and achievement because not many sides had come and won in Pakistan.

What I saw is Australia is very much an ‘old boys’ club. A lot of the ex-players carry a huge amount of weight and what they say, a lot goes, and that was the disappointing thing.

Every time we play for Pakistan, we are playing to win.

That’s part and parcel of touring England. You have to be very street smart and on your game. If you’re not, the media and the ECB will have a field day with you.

There’s pressure on each and every game.

I love the time I spend in Lahore and learn more about the culture every day.

I’ll never forget Cricket Australia telling me I was too soft and I’d been too soft with the team… I kind of didn’t know what they wanted.

A good coach will come in ra, ra, ra and rejig the whole set-up. That might work for a year or 18 months but isn’t sustainable. A great coach has the ability to get the best out of his players without the ra, ra, ra stuff.

I am so passionate about Pakistan cricket that I would never ever put myself in a position where there will be a conflict of interest.

It’s no easy task to coach the national team. I never realised to what extent one becomes the property of the people.

Some players listen with one ear only.