Frankly, I’m tempted to pull Mohammad Yousuf‘s beard till he squeals like a pig for his stupid pessimistic comments to the media!
First, he’s moaning about the fact that T20’s ruining Pakistan cricket.
It brings, to my mind, something which Gayle said when West Indies toured England last year.
When Andrew Strauss said that the England team valued playing tests over T20 and questioned Gayle’s priorities, Gayle fired back, saying that, if Test Cricket actually died, Strauss would find it difficult to keep his place in the side.
Now don’t get me wrong, I truly love test cricket and do, once in a while, mutter “Bloody T20 cricket, ruining cricket” with a Clint Eastwood-like face.
However, T20 isn’t necessarily to blame for players not being good at Test Cricket. In fact, T20 cricket has made test cricket better in that scoring rates have increased and lesser test matches are being drawn.
However, in Pakistan’s case, it’s a matter of not having played enough test in the past couple-of-years.
The way they played in the 1st test was nothing short of encouraging. Yes, the dropped catches were alarming. However, the batting and the bowling were quite good, especially the bowling.
I’m pretty sure that they’d put up a good fight in the 2nd test. After that, perhaps Yousuf can shove his comments up his …!
His comments on the fielding were also quite stupid. He says that the appointment of a fielding coach is pointless. He refers to the period when they had Johnty Rhodes as the coach.
However, it was only for a very short period of time.
If you look at it that way, then Mike Young has effectively contributed to the drop in fielding standards of the Indian side.
He came in recently for a 2 week assignment (which is barely enough time to make a significant impact). However, during the limited-overs leg of the recent SL tour of India, India’s fielding was absolutely atrocious!
However, I remember the time when Trevor Penney came in as the fielding coach for SL during 2005-2007.
IMO, that was the best period since the 1996 World Cup in terms of fielding. Old veterans like Jayasuriya and Murali were hitting the stumps from deep mid-off and they were taking really high catches.
However, Penney left with the then-head coach Tom Moody and, since then the fielding standards have gone down again.
Therefore, I’m quite sure that Pakistan’s fielding would improve much more if they could get a good fielding coach on board. Mike Young might not be a bad idea!
Off Cutter 
I don’t know why people are going after Yousuf so harsh, I think there has been some misunderstanding about his statement as usall t there is about Pakistani cricketer statements I guess language expression proeblem or whatever.
Well I think he was talking about Pakistani bastmen and T20 like effects on them as they are not consistent and even after getting some start throwing their wickets here and there. There are some concerns about attitude towards test cricket in Pakistan as many of young cricketer after finding it hard to get a chance for test and then consistently perform there is more and more tending towards shorter format and money involved in it so:
– He wasn’t talking about whole world that T20 is effecting them.
– He wasn’t talking about T20 destroying cricket.
– He was only concerned about his batsmen temperament and approach towards test batting in which he is fairly right.
– He was only trying to realize his batsmen about their role and responsibilities.
blah blah so point is I don’t think he did blame T20 for destroying overall test cricket as many of other PUNDITS have already said on million times, so I can’t understand why world go so YoYo against a Pakistani captain’s statements even if they are clearly directed towards his own team?
RS, the reason why I’m going bonkers over what MoYo said is ‘cos I’m sick and tired of listening to people saying that T20 is ruining test cricket. As I mentioned in my post, T20 is actually adding value to Test cricket. Faster scoring rates (Viru @ the Brabourne Stadium against SL), innovative shots (KP’s switch hit), more clever bowling have all come about largely due to the advent of limited overs cricket.
It’s just a media thing, the whole ‘death of test cricket’…..writers need to fill columns…..:)
I think Yusuf was talking about t20 and it’s affects on Pakistan cricket, or batsmen even, only; not cricket in general. His reason for his argument was that our batsmen do not spend enough time at the crease and that t20 does not help this problem. I agree with him. I also agree with you that t20 has added a lot to Test cricket. If you isolate his comments from the general media waffle about Tests dying, then I think you will be able to both agree with him yet still hold to your belief that t20 has added to cricket in general too.
SA, looks like the Pakistani batsmen are trying to prove something to Yousuf….126/1….watched the match for abt 2 hours today and am quite impressed by their solid blocking.
Their tactic to stonewall during the first session and go on the offensive after lunch is a pretty good idea…a shrewd mind hides behind the beard! 😛