— Photo: AFP

UPSET AND ANGRY: Younis Khan said he felt sad at the way the Pakistan players were treated on their return from the West Indies.

Karachi: Pakistan cricket plunged into another crisis with the senior player Younis Khan spurning captaincy and planning retirement from one-day cricket.

Younis was aghast at the way the players were treated on their return from the West Indies where Ireland knocked the team out of the World Cup.

Younis confirmed that Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Dr. Naseem Ashraf had offered him the captaincy with full powers.

"No thank you"

"But I told them `thank you for the offer but I am not interested, specially after the way the team has been treated after the World Cup,"' Younis told PTI on Friday.

Visibly upset and angry, Younis said he had still not recovered from the shame and stress of seeing people burning effigies of the players and staging mock burials.

Real challenge

Younis also said that he was thinking about quitting one-day cricket and concentrating on playing Test matches, which he considered the real cricket and challenge.

"I love Test cricket. It is the real sport for me. In the next few months, I will inform the Board about what I have decided."

Younis said he was very unhappy at the way the people, former players and media had reacted to the team's poor performance in the World Cup.

He also rubbished reports claiming he had demanded axing of a few players as a pre-condition to take up the captaincy

"I didn't make such demands. All the players are like my brothers. I don't want the captaincy because I am under a lot of mental stress and don't have the patience to face the sort of reaction we got after the World Cup." He was also very critical of the way the team had been treated in the West Indies after the murder of coach Bob Woolmer.

Humiliation

"We were treated as criminals, as if we had murdered Woolmer. People can't understand the shock we were in after realising that our coach had died. It was one of the worst weeks we had to face in our lives in Kingston after Woolmer's death," Younis said.

"The worst insult was on the day when we were to depart from Jamaica. The hotel management told us to vacate our rooms early morning, insisting this was their check out time," he recalled.

— PTI

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