Yousuf comes clean on 'back stabbing' and 'conspiracies' in 'fractured' Pak cricket

Islamabad, Feb.11 (ANI): Fissures in the Pakistan cricket team have finally surfaced, with captain Mohammed Yousuf blasting some of the senior players, saying they didn't co-operate with him during the tour of New Zealand and Australia.

In an interview with a private television channel, Yousuf said the statement of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chairman Ijaz Butt regarding him being removed from captaincy after the series Down Under changed the whole atmosphere of the dressing room.

"I don't know when the statement was made, but when it was, suddenly everyone in the team changed. Six or seven players started to see themselves as captains all of a sudden. At the start of the tour in New Zealand, the players were cooperating with me, but as the tour went on I felt they weren't because they knew I wouldn't be captain in the next series," he said.

Pakistan lost the Test series 3-0 in Australia, and were whitewashed 5-0 in the ODIs for only the second time in history. It also lost the lone T20 match of the tour by two wickets.

Yousuf first refused to name the players who were creating differences in the team, but when pestered he particularly targeted the Akmal brothers and former captain Shoaib Malik.

He targeted the younger Akmal in particular.

"Umar was fine as far as I knew. What happened in his room and how he got a stiff back all of a sudden was a surprise to me. He miraculously recovered as soon as we told him that he would be going home," The Dawn quoted Yousuf, as saying.

When asked to pick a player for Pakistan's captaincy, Yousuf said : "We all know what he's good at, certainly not captaincy," while referring to Malik. (ANI)