Forgot about Razzaq being ICL when I was thinking of who to replace Shoaib with. And there still might be a chance that a last minute deal can be made with Yousuf, if not all of the ICL players. Probably won't happen when the South Africa series comes around, but I'm fairly confident we'll at least have Yousuf back by the time of the series against India.
Butt has been pretty dire in Test matches, but I wouldn't necessarily be against giving him another run. And Younis batting at 5 is pretty much unprecedented. Hmm.. I'm not certain, but I'm pretty Yousuf has batted at 5 recently and I don't think it really seemed to affect him. Ditto with Younis batting at 4.
They did it in SA recently. Younis averaged 36.2 from 5 innings, and Yousuf averaged 37.75 from 4. Hm... maybe it would be better to stick with them at 3 and 4.
But I think keeping Butt out of the team is an equally bad mistake. Again, I reiterate, I'm not calling shots between Butt and Hafeez. At most it comes down to Taufeeq or Hafeez in my mind. And I'm not arguing that one is better than the other. All I'm arguing is that Butt has to play Tests.
I really can't see the PCB truly turning their back on Mohammad Yousuf. The board will everything in its power to get him back in Pakistan colours, even if that means expressing a blatant double standard.
Before Pakistan's last tour of England (ie his last 4 innings), he'd scored 420 runs from 10 innings with some good consistency (50% of his innings over 35, with 3x50 and 1x100 in the 10 innings). Hardly dire, IMO. It's like Prince was saying, two good series and a bad series gets you sacked when you're a Pakistani opener. But he looks a good player and has had some decent success in the past.
Heh. Except that Nazir's contemporaries (Shoaib, Gul, Asif) have far outperformed him. If it were closer to level pegging it'd have been a fair point, even with tongue in cheek.Go back to Nazir, I say!
Honestly don't think that proves much - the bowling was just better (and in Yousuf's case the catching) than it had been for the previous however-long-it's-been.
Oh, well he's not even a batsman at all.
The irony was acknowledged initially. The identity wasn't.Yeah, hence the ironic "let's bring him back" comment.
One wonders how genuine such a "retirement" is though, he could very easily be pulling an Afridi.
He was the first one though, by the chicken and eggs logic you had earlier mentioned. And yes it was a tongue in cheek remark, as was correctly identified.
Yeah, fair enough I suppose. Younis though, barring last year, has been as big of a run scorer for us as Yousuf, and I'd be probably be as much if not more concerned about him dropping down to five as I would be with Yousuf. Its going to be interesting to see what they actually do though, and if they can find the right mix with the likely accommodation of Hameed.Regarding Younis, you need your best batsman in at 3 or 4. And the best batsman is Yousuf, but Hameed HAS to bat at 3 if he plays, IMO. So that means I'd have Yousuf at 4 and Younis is a good enough batsman that he should be able to adjust to 5. He seems to bat pretty well with Malik too. Besides, I think he scored a 90 against New Zealand early in his career, at 5 or 6.
But he's also a very poor batsman. I'm talking about batsmen who look capable of scoring runs. And I've seen Imran Nazir bat several times, and he has rarely ever looked a competent batsman. He's had one big innings against a decent attack (v WI in 2000).
