Yousuf wants to return to cricket again
It has taken only an announcement of retirement from Test cricket by http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Afridi-c2482 to ensure that harsh words are being directly towards the Pakistan Cricket Board again. The cricket board does need to share some of the blame for the mire that the side finds itself in, and it needs to do something drastic to come out of it. After it pressured Afridi to take up the captaincy, he abruptly announced his retirement from five-day cricket partway through a test.
And that also gives rise to an opportunity for another, recently-retired cricketer to put his name in the hat and dream of making a comeback to the team. Mohammad Yousuf, who had retired from international cricket in a huff after he was banned indefinitely by the PCB, has said that he wouldn’t mind making a comeback for the sake of his country if he was asked to!.
Yousuf had retired from international cricket after the tour of Australia in the early part of this year. He was the captain of the side on that tour, but an abysmal performance by the team amidst reports of back-biting and instances of selfishness the team meant that Pakistan lost nine successive games to Australia. Yousuf lost his captaincy and in turn there was a committee that probed into the performance and recommended that both Yousuf and Younis Khan should be banned for life.
This had prompted the bearded Pakistani, middle-order batsman to call his retirement.
However, there had been talks of getting him back into the side even before Afridi had announced his shocking retirement after being icaptain for all of four days. According to Yousuf, he had decided to make a comeback to the side on Pakistan’s next tour of the UAE, but given the sorry state of affairs that Pakistan finds itself in, after the first Test match, Yousuf has said that he is willing to be back earlier.
Pakistan’s main issue in the first Test match that they lost to Australia at Lord’s was the absence of quality batting in the middle order. Apart from Salman Butt, none of the other batsmen, including the two debutants, Azhar Ali and Umar Amin, had any answers to the disciplined Australian attack and fell woefully short of making an impression.
There was news that there was a call from the PCB to the former batsman, Yousuf, to join the team, but it is said that the decision to do that has been postponed to the end of the second Test match against Australia. As it is, expecting Yousuf to play immediately after getting to England would be expecting a lot, given that he has not played any competitive cricket in a long time. The conditions in England are also far different from those found in Pakistan and that seems to have ensured that the PCB will need to wait till the end of the second game.
Yousuf said that he was available for his side at any point in time. He said that it was up to the team to decide whether he was needed or no, but also added in good measure that he would play only if he were to be called upon with respect.
Yousuf has had a history of retirements as well. He first retired from playing for Pakistan in 2007 when he was overlooked for the national T20 team for the ICC World T20. He quit and joined the parallel league, the Indian Cricket League. Later, when sense prevailed and he realised that playing in the ICL meant that he would not be able to play for Pakistan or the Indian Premier League, he tried to quit the ICL and get back to playing for Pakistan. However, the ICL took him to court, and given that a court-case was pending against him, none of the franchises from the IPL decided to select him. Then, he rejoined ICL for a short time before returning back to http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Australia-c746 that he lost all the games, was banned by the PCB and quit again.
For Yousuf to come back would be a strange twist in the drawn-out saga of the Pakistaini captaincy, but given how much drama has surrounded Pakistan's team, nothing much would come as a surprise.
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