September 20, 2008	Saturday	Ramazan 19, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Sept 19: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has slammed star batsman Mohammad Yousuf for his querying of selectors and threats to quit if he is continually left out of the national Twenty20 team.

Yousuf is regarded as one of the world’s leading one-day batsmen, but has played only one international Twenty20 match and was considered only an outside chance of being chosen for the four-nation Twenty20 tournament in Canada next month.

“On the face of it, it looks a hypothetical comment and it’s totally unwarranted,” PCB spokesman Mansoor Suhail said on Friday, adding that Yousuf should not attempt to pre-empt selection. “There is no denying the fact that he is a great batsman, but he has acted in haste by criticizing the selection process.”

Yousuf was quoted in a leading Urdu-language newspaper on Friday as saying that, “My name comes in the first playing 11, what to talk about 15. Pakistan will suffer the most if the selectors dropped me. If I’ll be dropped .... it will be a big shock to me.”

Yousuf said that if Pakistan’s three former captains —Inzamam-ul-Haq, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis — endorsed the decision of selectors of ignoring him for Twenty20 cricket then he would consider retirement. “If there is someone else who can bat better than me I am willing to quit cricket,” he said.

Pakistan are scheduled to play in the four-nation Twenty20 tournament in Toronto next month against Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka and Canada. The squad was yet to be selected.

Yousuf was dropped from the Pakistan team that played in the final of last year’s inaugural World Twenty20 tournament in South Africa.

He has scored 9,242 runs in 269 One-day Internationals and was shortlisted for the year’s best ODI player, but the right-handed batsman’s only Twenty20 international was against England in 2006 in which he scored run-a-ball 20.

Yousuf’s mediocre fielding had been cited as a factor in his Twenty20 non-selection, but the 34-year-old said, “I just want to ask them how many Jonty Rhodes are there in the Pakistan team?”.

Pakistan’s leading players will compete in the National Twenty20 tournament, starting from Oct. 4 in Lahore and the selectors would use the event to assess players before naming the squad for Toronto.

Yousuf will lead Lahore Lions in the tournament, but was not happy that it should be treated as an audition. “It’s not a test case for me,” he said. “After representing Pakistan for 11 years ..... I just want to make it clear that I am not playing (in the national Twenty20) to prove my abilities to anyone.”—AP