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Mohammad Yousuf traced Pakistan cricket’s decline to the 2021 T20 World Cup win over India.
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He said players became arrogant and a race to become captain damaged the dressing room.
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Yousuf backed the PCB’s decision to send seven players home mid-tour.
T20 World Cup win over India has led to Pakistan’s decline
The search for the moment Pakistan cricket went wrong has consumed pundits for the better part of five years, and Mohammad Yousuf has now offered perhaps the most unexpected origin point of all.
The former batting great believes the rot set in not with a defeat but with a victory, specifically the 10-wicket demolition of India at the 2021 T20 World Cup in Dubai.
It is a striking claim. That match, in which Babar Azam struck an unbeaten 68 and Mohammad Rizwan made 79 not out as Pakistan chased 152 without losing a wicket, remains one of the most celebrated results in the country’s cricketing history.
Yousuf argues it was also the most damaging. His comments arrive with Pakistan’s Test cricket at its lowest point in memory, having lost seven consecutive away Tests in SENA countries and been forced into a chaotic mid-tour overhaul during the ongoing series in England.
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What Mohammad Yousuf said about the 2021 win over India
Speaking on Samaa TV, Yousuf drew a direct line between the euphoria of the Dubai victory and the entitlement he believes it bred inside the dressing room.
“That match which we won against India in 2021, that damaged us a lot. Because after that victory, players started to think that they had achieved something big. They couldn’t understand what they had to do next,” Yousuf said.
He framed the problem as one of attitude rather than ability, pointing to a loss of humility as the starting point for everything that followed. “When you are performing well, you should stay humble. If you behave with your collar raised and get disrespectful, problems will arrive. And a lot of them have arrived in Pakistan cricket,” he added.
The former batter also identified an internal power struggle that emerged in the aftermath, with multiple players manoeuvring for the captaincy. “Everyone in the team was trying to become the captain of the Pakistan team. The consequences are still hurting Pakistan cricket,” Yousuf said.
Why Yousuf’s diagnosis is honest but incomplete
There is something refreshingly blunt about a former player identifying a victory rather than a defeat as the point where things went wrong, and the observation about entitlement is one several other Pakistan greats have hinted at without stating so directly.
Winning a dead-rubber group-stage fixture while treating it as a World Cup final created expectations the team was never equipped to sustain. Where the argument falls short is in letting the system off the hook. The captaincy race Yousuf describes did not happen in a vacuum.
The PCB appointed and removed three permanent captains in the two years following that Dubai win, and the constant reshuffling of the coaching staff meant no single voice was ever given the authority to instil the discipline he is calling for.
Players became arrogant, in his telling, but they were also operating in an environment that rewarded short-term survival over long-term commitment. Blaming a single win five years ago captures a symptom rather than the disease.
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Source: sports.yahoo.com
