 Pakistan's current captain Mohammad Yousuf has said that the excess of
T20 cricket has caused issues with the team's performances in the test matches.
He has said that the side should not indulge themselves in the format or test
cricket "could be finished"
Pakistan has been struggling with their batting performance in the longest
format of the game for some time now. In Australia, in the first test match
at Melbourne Cricket Ground, on a pitch that seemed tailor made for the batsmen,
the team failed to get going with the bat and had two scores of around 250 only.
And this is not a singular performance from the Pakistani team, as they struggled
in the series against New Zealand as well, and apart from a strong bowling
from Mohammad Asif, they could have lost the series rather easily.
In the last 14 innings in the tests, the Pakistanis have passed 350 only twice,
which is a stark indicator of how badly the batsmen have gone about their business.
Yousuf said that while the batting failures have happened in the past as well,
the bigger problem is that the players have forgotten how to stay put at the
crease due to their rendezvous with the T20 format. In a worrying statement,
he said that if Pakistan over-hypes the T20 format, the test cricket and ODIs
could suffer a lot.
Pakistan is one of the first countries to embrace the T20 culture when they
had a domestic T20 league as early as in 2005 and 2006. The format was received
well by the crowds and since then the Pakistanis have been practicing hard at
it, getting to the finals of the 2007 ICC World T20 and winning the 2009 edition
of the ICC World T20.
He said, "Twenty20 is easy for Pakistanis because they know how to hit,
nobody knows how to defend. Until players do not play with discipline and play
ball to ball and leave balls they are supposed to we will struggle in ODIs,
let alone Tests."
Yousuf had himself had a tryst with the T20 cricket earlier, when he, after
been dropped from the T20 team had walked into the Indian Cricket League.
However, the league was unsanctioned and he tried to make a hasty retreat back
to international level, but wasn't let off by the ICL authorities. He returned
to the ICL as he was left without much choice but after he was given the amnesty,
he returned to the international fold. Younis Khan had then resigned
from the captaincy and Mohammad Yousuf was assigned the captaincy on a temporary
basis.
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