A leader in his own
This year Pakistan cricket went through a disaster. They had enormous troubles in their batting, bowling and of course fielding. However, apart from these the internal problems were far greater spreading from the change of Chairman of PCB to the change of captains. The statistics show that Pakistan success in cricket One Day Internationals this year is approximately 40% which never fell below 70% in the past.
The reasons were many but the most prominent one was the issue of captaincy. Shoaib Malik was removed from captaincy in the start of the year after completing a period of 2 years. He is a very soft spoken and a lenient person so was having some troubles in controlling the team members. Younis Khan was made the new captain and a series of unfortunate events started. First of all we lost the series against the Aussies in Dubai. It was a big setback as our captain who was regarded as the key player of our team failed to make an impact in any of the 5 matches. Then we lost some matches that we could have easily won without much effort but our own silly mistakes and lofted shots at crucial times paved the way towards our failure. Then Kamran Akmal , the wicket keeper batsman, was made the new vice captain. Younis Khan was a very strict, agile and strong leader though he seldom gives respect to the senior players when they perform badly. This is justified but the players don’t like his attitude towards them. So they didn’t perform under his leadership and the arrival of new lads further daunted their careers so they conspired or what we can say is that they complained against him. Then we lost a series against Sri Lanka and it was the first Test Match Series that we lost in the entire history of Pakistan, based on the series held in Sri Lanka.
Then in the Champions Trophy we reached the semi-finals and then lost to New Zealand. A poor performance as we were nearly winning but thanks to Umar Gul who gave 18 runs at a crucial stage resulting that we lost the match. The supremacy of our performance is clearly shown when we look at the top rankings. There is no bowler of ours in the top 10 One day bowlers. No batsman is either there too which is of course not a surprise for us. The consequence that Pakistan’s ranking fell from 3 to 7. It’s quite a big decrease if there are only ten nations who play cricket world wide.
His temperament was the key thing. He always used to laugh even when the odds are against him. His smiley faced caused many controversies as well as it also symbolizes stupidity sometimes that you are smiling when your team has lost. However, he never used to blame his mates openly in the public. Malik along with few team mates who were constantly dropped because they were underperforming in Younis’ leadership, made a secret meeting with the manager Yawar Saeed. They raised points against him and soon his leaderhip was taken from him. This was clearly unfair as any decision couldn’t be taken without the consent of the whole board and players. However, he himself took a rest for a series and left cricket for a while.
A new captain in the name of Muhammed Yousuf was made who was slow-paced and very defensive captain. His captaincy is also in doubt as he is not a permanent captain of Pakistan cricket team.
Younis Khan was surely a leader of class. His decisions were good most of the times. His own fielding was awesome, a prospering factor, though his batting skills deteriorated in his own captaincy and he struggled. His smile made people his own and his words were always showing his enthusiasm and determination to uplift his nation. In the last days of his captaincy his smile started perishing away. We wish that he can again make his position in the side as he surely deserves one.