Only one player ruining team spirit and unity: Mohammad Yousuf

By Rahul Bajaj
for Cricketain.com

Published: February 10, 2010

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Karachi: Pakistan skipper Mohammad Yousuf has shocked everyone by saying that there is only one player in the Pakistan team who is responsible for all the trouble that the team is going through and that he is running the team spirit and unity of the Pakistan outfit.

Although Yousuf gave broad hints during a lengthy TV interview, he stopped short of revealing the name of the player.

“There is no doubt there is only 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 told Geo Super. “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. “From New Zealand 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.”

Pakistan were humiliated by Australia and couldn’t manage to win a single game on the entire tour. They lost the test series 3-0, were whitewashed 5-0 in the ODIs for the second time in history, and lost the final game of the tour as well – a Twenty20 international at the MCG.

Yousuf, by default, was the first to come under the scanner for his captaincy. His cause wasn’t helped by a statement from the board chairman midway through the tour – which was denied eventually – that the captaincy would change hands once the tour ended.

Yousuf said the statement had an effect on the side. “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.”

Yousuf also defended his leadership, arguing that nobody wanted the job when the toughest challenges presented themselves. “I don’t have natural leadership qualities in me but I have tried hard to do a good job of the responsibility given to me,” he said. “It is unfair to compare me with Ricky Ponting as far as captaincy is concerned because he is far more experienced. I accepted the captaincy in the best interest of my country.”

“If you look around the world every country’s top performing player is the captain. If in Pakistan a youngster becomes the top performing player in the side by all means make him captain. I did it at a difficult time when nobody was prepared to do it.”

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