It isn’t surprising that no one is buying the official line. Younis Khan, we are told, ‘asked for a rest’ and that is why Mohammad Yousuf was appointed captain of the Pakistan Test team for the series against New Zealand. That explanation, not so cunningly, glosses over a key point: what compelled Younis to go into hibernation? Answer: he was forced to surrender the captaincy through a combination of player power and lack of support from an increasingly inept PCB. He has been ousted by the players, not the Pakistan Cricket Board. Clearly, Younis Khan was not popular with his charges — he has himself admitted that he lost ‘command over this team’. True, on occasion his captaincy skills left much to be desired. And yes, off the pitch he was prone to utterances driven more by impulsiveness than due deliberation.

All that is neither here nor there when it comes to appointing or sacking skippers. We’ve seen it all before with player revolts against Mushtaq Mohammad, Javed Miandad and Wasim Akram. The bottom line is this: the PCB must back the captain it has appointed until the board itself loses confidence in the man. Instead, the board has been arm-twisted — yet again — into taking decisions demanded by the players. As former captain Aamir Sohail put it the other day, the country’s cricketers need to be told that they should quit the team if they don’t like the captain. Replacements will be found.

In the not too distant past, Mohammad Yousuf went public with highly disparaging remarks about former captain Shoaib Malik. What if Shoaib doesn’t feel comfortable playing under Yousuf and a new clique is formed to engineer another change at the helm?

This is a vicious circle that can be broken only by a cricket board that has its own house in order. Never a bastion of stability, the PCB under Ijaz Butt has become more or less dysfunctional. The chairman ditches strong stands taken only weeks earlier and denies statements issued at press conferences. As we have said before, Mr Butt is not the man for the job and must vacate his post without further delay.