Friday, October 16, 2009

Nawaz urges Khan to quit one-day game

Former Pakistan test bowler Sarfraz Nawaz says Younis Khan should stand down from one-day cricket entirely rather than seek to hold on to the national captaincy in that form of the game.

Khan resigned as captain on Tuesday in protest at match-fixing allegations leveled at the Pakistan team in the recent Champions Trophy. He quit after appearing before a parliamentary committee that cleared the team of those allegations.

However Khan was reported to be considering resuming the job, conditional upon being guaranteed the captaincy through to the 2011 World Cup.

Sarfraz says Khan's resignation was intended to disguise his poor performance in the Champions Trophy, and that his faltering form means he should retire from one-day internationals, just as he had retired from Twenty20 cricket after leading Pakistan to the T20 World Cup title earlier this year.

"All this captaincy controversy is just creating more confusion in Pakistan cricket," Nawaz told Associated Press.

"Younis wants to gain people's sympathy by resigning from the captaincy and he is trying to hide his faults which he committed during the Champions Trophy.

"He should realize himself that he does not fit in shorter formats of the game."
As Pakistan's one-day captain, the 31-year-old Khan had scored a mediocre 441 runs in 18 games at an average of 24.50. By contrast he was averaging 55.85 as test captain, including a triple century against Sri Lanka this year.

Nawaz suggested opening batsman Salman Butt as the new test captain if Younis does not resume the job, while saying Shahid Afridi _ already captain of the Twenty20 side _ should also be the one-day skipper.

"The PCB should have made Afridi captain for both Twenty20 and ODIs instead of naming separate captains."

Nawaz wants Afridi to captain Pakistan in next month's series against New Zealand in the United Arab Emirates, which includes three one-dayers and two Twenty20 games.
"Khan should be dropped from the team because of his performance in the Champions Trophy," Nawaz said.

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