Daily Times

Former Pakistani cricketer Mohammad Yousuf believes that New Zealand’s skipper Kane Williamson was a fantastic role-model for any young cricketer, saying the right-handed batsman plays the game in the right way.

“I always ask the boys to watch Kane Williamson’s batting. I enjoy watching him bat, his approach and how technically sound he is. He is a fantastic role-model for any young cricketer. He plays the game in the right way and has not compromised on his technique despite playing in T20 leagues and it’s quite clear to me that he is someone who pays a lot of attention to and works a lot on the technical side of his batting,” PakPassion.net quoted him as saying. To a question of whether Twenty20 cricket was spoiling the technique of batsmen, Yousuf, who represented Pakistan 381 times scoring 17,300 runs, said it depends on the individual and what brand of cricket they want to play.

“I give you the example of Babar Azam who is a technically gifted batsman and who has shown that he can score runs in all three formats. It all depends on the individual and how they want to bat. The fact is that whichever batsman has the right technique, they can succeed in all formats,” he said. Yousuf, who has been performing his duties as batting coach at the National High Performance Centre (NHPC), Lahore since August 2020, said he talks about just one thing with all players he coaches which was technique, technique and technique. “Whenever you are struggling, whenever you are under pressure, it is your technique and technical ability that will get you out of trouble and nothing else will. If you have technique to fall back on, then you can cope with pressure, if you haven’t got any technique then you will scratch around and fail 8 times out of 10 when you are under pressure,” he said.

About why was Pakistan struggling in the middle-order, Yousuf said the only thing he can do was to work with the batsmen that were sent to him and look at their areas of weakness and where he can try to improve them. “I can also work with batsmen at training camps when they are organised such as the recent one where there were 26 players selected to work with the NHPC coaches in Lahore,” he said. “What I will emphasise though is that First-class cricket has to be the priority and the main criteria for selection, and all countries that are prioritising First-class cricket will always produce good cricketers. Those nations that don’t prioritise First-class cricket will struggle to regularly produce world-class cricketers,” he said.

He said Tests in the olden days used to be a crucial part of the cricketing calendar. “There are only a few countries like India, New Zealand, England and Australia who are taking Test cricket seriously. What you tend to find nowadays is that white-ball formats are the money-spinners and the priority for many countries with a Test or two thrown in to make up the numbers. In my opinion cricket in today’s world is all about money and this is a serious concern, especially when it comes to the future of Test cricket,” he said.