Pakistan revert to familiar disarray

One day after Pakistan's stirring triumph at Bangalore last year, Wisden Asia Cricket had the pleasure of meeting Younis Khan. His batting - a mammoth double hundred and a fifty to follow - provided the statistical heart of the victory but his incessantly bubbly nature had been its overbearing motif. Glowing throughout, he chatted amicably for nearly two hours about his life, his cricket.

At one stage, he was asked to explain his particularly pointed celebration upon reaching his hundred: facing the dressing room, he had extravagantly dusted his hands in the manner one might when signifying that something had finished. His tone suddenly hardened: "They (someone in the board) told me I was khalaas (after his Kolkatta second innings duck). So my gesture was to those who thought I was finished. What did they have to say now?'

He also revealed that he had turned down an offer to become Waqar Younis's deputy for the 2002-03 disaster series against Australia. According to him, he was unfairly shuffled in and out of the team because of it for two years after. Then, last year as captain in a Test against the West Indies at Barbados, he was allegedly involved in a physical dressing-room scuffle with Shahid Afridi.

None are perhaps directly relevant to his spectacularly abrupt press conference this morning and you can make of them what you will. But they are worth remembering if only because they hint that beyond Younis the happy, Younis the genial, Younis the uncomplicated, Younis the cheerleader, Younis the obvious leader, exists Younis the unknown.

But creating such an unseemly public ruckus to wash his hands of the captaincy, by going to the press before his employer, so close to a major tournament and at a time when he seemed primed for leadership tops it all. Was there any need to compromise both his position and the board so petulantly? Would not a private discussion with the PCB or team management been a more sensible course?

Not knowing why only worsens it. The speculation hasn't stopped of course and for such a stupefying situation, some of it has been predictably bizarre. He was unhappy over the selection of Faisal Iqbal as replacement for Inzamam, he was unhappy at having been made to wait for a meeting with the chairman, he was unhappy at the dismissal of a worker at the National Cricket Academy. If true - and it sounds just too preposterous - they are indeed as one official said very petty reasons.

It has also been hinted that he was peeved at being made captain only for the Champions Trophy and that, at the instigation of some ex-cricketers, he protested at being made, in his own words, "a dummy captain". Others will tut-tut and hastily stereotype his decision as the impulsions of a proud Pathan slighted, the kind perhaps Afridi demonstrated in his decision to retire only to u-turn soon after earlier this year. More muck will undoubtedly be flung. But will the truth ever out? It is the way of these things that inevitably it will but, for Younis's sake if nothing else, you hope it is sooner rather than later.

What is more certain is that he should consider himself very fortunate to still be in the side. It was the view of some officials during the meeting that he should have been sacked and many might be inclined to agree with them. His expression of regret, at the intervention allegedly of Inzamam and Mushtaq Ahmed, has saved his place in the side. But any aspirations to future captaincy, as one official said, should be forgotten now. However, within the unique parameters of Pakistan cricket, in the long-term, that is probably neither here nor there.

Not so lucky are the PCB. For once in the country's troubled recent history of leadership a succession plan was in place. Inzamam was doing the necessary and Younis was waiting in the wings. He had, in Imran Khan and Nasser Hussain, two admirers with impeccable leadership credentials. Such an impression had he made in the brief, staggered opportunities he had as captain that very few doubted he would be captain everntually, and a fine one at that.

There was even widespread debate after the ODI series loss to India earlier this year on whether Younis should already be captain. Inzamam's four-match ban in a sense was ideal, for it allowed Younis to be tested as leader in a tournament significant enough to matter but not the one that is the be-all and end-all. For the foreseeable future, that plan is in ruins.

A cricket-mad acquaintance remarked before the Oval Test that Pakistan cricket, in the preceding two years, had been too quiet, too stable. Almost with sorrow he said that the only news had recently been on the field rather than off it. Sure, the odd Shoaib Akhtar shenanigan quenched the thirst for volatility but it wasn't nearly enough as Inzamam and Bob Woolmer went about rebuilding cricket with unfamiliar calm and level-headedness. Some ball tampering hoopla and a shady captaincy muddle later, Pakistan cricket is back on familiar territory. Leaving all us cynics to ask now: has it ever been any other way?