Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Yousuf in the Confessional

If you haven't already, you must read this report about an extremely frank interview with Mohammad Yousuf (that apparently aired yesterday on some television channel) and in which he lays directly into Umar Akmal, Shoaib Malik and an unnamed player. I don't know which channel this was, if anyone knows please let us know, particularly if there's a weblink to the interview.



Some choice excerpts of what Yousuf said:

On PCB Chairman Ejaz Butt announcing midway through tour that he would be replaced as skipper:


“I don't know when the statement was made, but when it was, suddenly everyone in the team changed. Six or seven players started to see themselves as captains all of a sudden. At the start of the tour in New Zealand, the players were cooperating with me, but as the tour went on I felt they weren't because they knew I wouldn't be captain in the next series.”


On Umar Akmal's mysterious "stiff back":


“Umar was fine as far as I knew. What happened in his room and how he got a stiff back all of a sudden was a surprise to me. He miraculously recovered as soon as we told him that he would be going home.”


On Shoaib Malik as a possible captain:


“We all know what he’s good at, certainly not captaincy.”


On the most problematic player in the team:


“There is one player in the team who is disturbing team unity and other players. I spoke to coach Intikhab Alam and other management about it and they agreed with me," Yousuf said. “I will only disclose his name to the chairman of the board, Ijaz Butt.”
“Intikhab Alam (coach), Abdur Raqeeb (manager) and [Shahid] Afridi know who the player is and we discussed it as well several times,” Yousuf added.
“During the New Zealand tour and onwards Intikhab was telling me to be wary of him, but I wanted to see for myself. I saw in Australia how his body language was and we dropped him from the Tests. We decided in Australia during a meeting that we had to do something about him.”


Hmmmm. An intriguer who Yousuf does not like and who did not play in the Tests. One guess who this one is.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The interview was on Geo Super

Enam Hasan said...

The guy Yousuf is point at is definitely Malik, accompanied by Kamran Akmal, though Yousuf wouldn't get his politics right because of friendship thingie. Yousuf is facing what Younis has already faced. This is going down big time, I believe. Wait and watch.


-E
mangopeople.blog.com

Anonymous said...

...and Afridi is not the captain for the UAE series because the board wants to test the bond between Malik and him.

To hell with all of them, just give the captaincy to Afridi and let him decide his own team.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but Afridi is not the captain because he is banned for biting that bloody ball.
Now if you want a captain who can bite all the non-performing players' balls maybe you we have the right man after all