Pakistan captain Younus Khan revealed turning down a request from the cricket board chairman Ejaz Butt to lead the team in the Twenty20 International in Sri Lanka.
Younus, who announced his retirement from Twenty20 cricket after winning the World Cup in England in June, confirmed during a talk show on Geo Super channel that Butt had spoken to him about the captaincy issue when he visited Colombo.
“Butt told me I should lead the team in the Twenty20 match as well and take back my decision to retire,” Younus said.
“But I told the chairman that if I take back my retirement decision, people will laugh at me. Don’t fancy such a situation and my decision not to play Twenty20 cricket is final,” he said.
Eventually the board named Shahid Afridi to lead Pakistan in the one off Twenty20 match in Sri Lanka which Pakistan won comfortably and Afridi is now tipped to continue as captain until the next Twenty20 World Cup in the West Indies in mid 2010.
Younus also maintained there were no difference within the team but if any player had any problem with him, he was willing to sit down and talk over things.
“I am one of the few captains in Pakistan cricket who accepted captaincy because of people’s demand. I am a people’s captain. I have been keeping my temper under control and I have been trying to take every player along with me. So there is not dispute in the team,” he said.
Younus also made it clear he would not hesitate to resign if players didn’t support him. The Pakistan captain also took the occasion to make it clear that no Indian bookmaker had made any contact with any Pakistani player in Colombo and it was he who got rid of the pestering people in their Colombo hotel.
“I told the manager that Pakistan has already suffered a lot because of these match-fixing allegations and the ICC is also very strict about this issue so he should take steps to move the players away from strange people pestering them in the team hotel,” he said.
