One member of the Pakistani cricket team that toured New Zealand and Australia was particularly disruptive and outright ill-behaved, Mohammad Yousuf, the interim captain for the two series, revealed yesterday in a TV interview. But it wasn’t just this mysterious player who copped some serious flak from Yousuf. Shoaib Malik and the Akmal brothers were subject to some harsh words a well.

“There is one player in the team who is disturbing team unity and other players. I spoke to coach Intikhab Alam and other management about it and they agreed with me," Yousuf said. “I will only disclose his name to the chairman of the board, Ijaz Butt.”

“Intikhab Alam (coach), Abdur Raqeeb (manager) and [Shahid] Afridi know who the player is and we discussed it as well several times,” Yousuf added.

“During the New Zealand tour and onwards Intikhab was telling me to be wary of him, but I wanted to see for myself. I saw in Australia how his body language was and we dropped him from the Tests. We decided in Australia during a meeting that we had to do something about him.”

Pakistan lost the Test series 3-0 in Australia, were whitewashed 5-0 in the ODIs for only the second time in history, and lost the final game of the tour as well - a T20 at the MCG.

Yousuf’s captaincy came in for much criticism, in particular from the last day of the Sydney Test onwards. To add to his woes a statement reportedly from the board chairman midway through the tour that the captaincy would change hands once the tour ended, completely disjointed the team.

Yousuf said the statement triggered a race for the captaincy and completely shook up the team’s morale. “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.”

Yousuf defended his leadership, arguing that nobody wanted the job when the toughest challenges presented themselves. “I don't have natural leadership qualities in me but I have tried hard to do a good job of the responsibility given to me,” he said.

“It is unfair to compare me with Ricky Ponting as far as captaincy is concerned because he is far more experienced. I accepted the captaincy in the best interest of my country. I had a lot of lengthy discussion with Ponting during breaks as the two teams usually got together for lunch. He told me that when he was appointed to lead Australia he laid down two conditions before Cricket Australia: ‘I want players in the team who think along the same lines as me and I only want players who will put their country before everything,’ he told them.”

This comment seemed to be hinting at the Akmal brothers and when prompted Yousuf got stuck into the younger one 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,” Yousuf said with a grin on face.

Shoaib Malik, a man who doesn’t exactly tickle the fancy of Yousuf because of a fractious past, was also subject to some sly when the TV interviewer asked Yousuf to pick a possible candidate for Pakistan’s captaincy. “We all know what he’s good at, certainly not captaincy,” the veteran batsman said.

Yousuf’s interview, quite detailed and frank, was a sharp contrast to his perceived personality, humble and kind. It was evidence of the hard knock life that is Pakistan cricket and its captaincy. The sooner he brings this new found posture to the field the better it will be for his team’s fortunes, that is if we he leads againLINK.