How Owen Eastwood appointment inspired Multan Sultans' new era

NICK FRIEND – INTERVIEW: Multan Sultans owner Ali Khan Tareen explains how hiring Eastwood, the renowned performance coach, enabled the foundation of a new culture at the franchise

Ali Khan Tareen mentions Owen Eastwood a lot. The New Zealander is a performance coach, whose career has taken him from the Ryder Cup to the England football team, via South African cricket and NATO's command group.

But earlier this year, with Multan Sultans in the midst of a rebuilding phase, Tareen, the owner, enlisted Eastwood to model a new culture, not unlike in his role as Luke Donald's guru with his European Ryder Cup squad, and with similarities too to Chelsea, where he took on a project around the club's history and identity earlier this year amid a significant shift in personnel.

One of franchise cricket's grandest challenges is in manufacturing an environment for players from all over the world who, for little longer than a month, are teammates. At the most successful franchises, the core remains the same year-on-year, but that is hardly the norm in an industry constantly in flux.

Tareen talks about the circuit's reputation for "a mercenary culture", and he explains how one of his primary objectives with Multan has been to move away from that stereotype, particularly after an off-season that saw plenty of upheaval.

"That's when I felt the lack of a team culture," Tareen told The Cricketer, "where everyone was moving on to do their own thing, while our team was up in the air. There wasn't any connection to the team between players and staff, as much as I'd want in a team that I ran. In a very short time, I asked how we could start to connect people. We wanted to focus on developing a proper team culture.

"So, having Owen onboard was invaluable. All the stuff we set up was because of things that he had talked about. "Small touches made such a huge difference in how the team operated and worked together. The foundations laid this year, we could not have done any of it without Owen. Other people were jealous of the culture, atmosphere and vibe in our camp."

He points to "little things" like particular awards handed out at the end of each game, win or lose, that weren't always cricket-based but reflected what Tareen wanted Sultans to look like. After one match, he handed what he called "the warrior award" to one player who dropped the first two catches that came his way but took the third. The justification came from Eastwood's assistant, "who said that we don't want people thinking this is a performance award".

^{Owen Eastwood has been in demand across several sporting environments (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)}

That prize came with no financial incentive but, in Tareen's eyes, spoke to his idea for what he wanted his franchise to stand for. "In our first Zoom meeting with Owen," he recalled, "he asked what our vision was. This was the year to plant the seeds."

Tareen added: "There is this idea that foreign players aren't very invested in the team, that it isn't really your team," said Tareen. "But I wanted everyone to understand that, while they're playing for Multan, they're not playing for the owner, nor yourselves or the coach, but the people of South Punjab. They are people of a very underdeveloped, difficult area. So, they watch us and are inspired by us.

"You have to understand their life, what's at stake for them when we're on the pitch. It is one of the lowest in Pakistan for education, employment. So, the people who make it from the area, they have to fight the odds to make it. They have a warrior spirit, so we need to fight like warriors.

"I said, 'Please understand that they won't care if you lose. But if you guys give up, they will not accept that.'

"We take our responsibility very seriously. If we want to inspire people, we have to take that responsibility seriously. Hopefully, when security eases, we want to integrate South Punjab in a much more meaningful way in our future. I want to connect our core group with the people in the area."

He classes Mohammad Rizwan as the ultimate Multan player, having made little impact in the Pakistan Super League by Lahore Qalandars and Karachi Kings, where he was written off as an unfashionable T20 cricketer, only to then join Sultans, lead them to the title in his first year and become the top-ranked T20I batter in the world. "This is our spirit," said Tareen, "the spirit we embody."

For this, he highlights the role played by David Willey, who joined the franchise in 2024 and, Tareen says, exemplified the approach he hoped to see from his overseas players.

He explained: "David came up to me the next day and said, 'I've heard a lot of this fluff about being a family, but the people we are playing for I had never thought about. So, tell me more about them.' He asked me more and more about the people of South Punjab, and you could see him change his mindset after those first few days. When we saw how invested he'd become, we asked him to become a vice-captain.

^{David Willey became a key part of Sultans' environment (Farooq Naeem/AFP via Getty Images)}

"From then, every meeting he was part of it – the batters' meetings, a more prominent role on the field and before the toss. He became an integral part of our team; we were blown away by how much he became one of us. He's part of our leadership group now."

Tareen has planned a trip to Dubai for Sultans' leadership group ahead of next year's PSL, and his hope is that Willey will be part of it, "because we feel like he's part of us".

Ahead of the 2024 tournament, Sultans lost their head coach, assistant coach, analyst and general manager, as well as several key players, with Shan Masood, Rilee Rossouw, Tim David, Kieron Pollard and David Miller all moving on.

In their place, Multan hired a local head coach in Abdul Rehman and appointed Hijab Zahid as the first female GM in the competition's history, while Catherine Dalton and Alex Hartley were signed up as bowling coaches, the first women to coach in the PSL. Both have been "locked in" to return next year.

Sultans would go on to top the group phase, qualifying at the first attempt for the final, which they lost to Islamabad United off the last ball.

On one level, this was a fourth final in succession, a continuation of what had come before. On another, though, Sultans' 2024 campaign came effectively with a new team and a different strategy, while the ownership had also passed to Ali after the passing of his uncle, Alamgir.

"The biggest thing that we thought about when building our team was that the team he built was built for success," said Tareen. "That was what the fans loved about it. So, whatever team we built, we had to build on his successful legacy, so we had to make sure that we could continue that success. We couldn't damage his legacy. We need to build a team that can win this year. We need to win every single year because that is how my uncle played it.

"I have no words to describe how happy I am with how things have gone, especially around Cath and Alex. My worst fear was being used as an example of how things go badly. But we had the highest wicket-takers in the tournament, who worked with our coaches throughout. The way our coaches' value spread, for me that was my biggest sense of achievement. Hopefully, it will spur on more teams around the world to open their minds and have equal opportunities for coaches in their setups."

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