Former Pakistan cricketer Mohammad Yousuf was recently in the news when he came out openly to criticise Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) for their decision to continue with Misbah-ul-Haq for his dual role of both head coach as well as the selector.
Now, the former legend is again in the headlines as he opined that former players should not be compared with the current lot. Yousuf stated that in the past, there were three-four top quality players in major teams like India, Australia and South Africa, but they should not be compared with the current generation cricketers.
The 45-year-old took the names of players like Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman and Yuvraj Singh and said they couldn’t be compared with the current talented batsmen like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
“In the past, teams, such as India, Australia and South Africa, had 3-4 quality players in the side. India, for example, had players like [Rahul] Dravid, Sachin [Tendulkar], [Virender] Sehwag, [Sourav] Ganguly, [VVS] Laxman and Yuvraj Singh. These six batsmen were playing in a single team,” said Yousuf during a TV show as quoted by Cricket Pakistan.
“The current Indian team does not have such batsmen. You can’t compare the current players [such as Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma] with the class of Sachin and Dravid,” the Lahore-born added.
Yousuf featured in 288 One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and 90 Tests for Pakistan, in which he accumulated 9720 and 7530 runs. His average in ODI was 41.7 whereas in the red-ball format the phenomenal batsman averaged 52.30.
