The story of Pakistan’s current cricket crisis, in Mohammad Yousuf’s eyes, doesn’t begin in a dressing room bust-up or a botched selection meeting. It begins on a glittering night in Dubai in 2021, when Pakistan finally did what generations had failed to do.
They hammered India in a World Cup.
Babar Azam stroked an unbeaten 68. Mohammad Rizwan finished 79 not out. A target of 152 vanished without the loss of a single wicket. Ten wickets in hand, a hoodoo shattered, a nation in rapture.
For most of Pakistan, it was catharsis. For Yousuf, it was the start of something far more corrosive.
“That match which we won against India in 2021, that damaged us a lot,” the former batting great said on Samaa TV.
The words cut against the grain of the national memory. But he doubled down. In his view, that win did not just lift Pakistan; it warped them.
Players, he said, “started to think that they had achieved something big. They couldn’t understand what they had to do next.” The message he keeps coming back to is simple: when you’re flying, you stay grounded. Pakistan, he believes, did the opposite.
“If you behave with your collar raised, and get disrespectful, problems will arrive. And a lot of them have arrived in Pakistan cricket,” Yousuf warned. The issue, for him, isn’t just about results on a scoreboard. It’s about a shift in attitude, a subtle but damaging change in how players saw themselves and each other after Dubai.
From humility to hunger for the armband
Yousuf’s criticism doesn’t stop at overconfidence. He draws a straight line from that famous win to something more political: the fight for captaincy.
“Everyone in the team was trying to become the captain of the Pakistan team,” he said.
The accusation is stark. In his telling, personal ambition began to overshadow responsibility. Players, instead of shoring up their own games, started looking at the top job.
The fallout, he argues, has been visible across formats and tournaments.
“Look at all the cricket Pakistan has played in the last four-five years, from ODI World Cups, T20 World Cups to Asia Cups and Champions Trophy. There has been terrible cricket,” Yousuf said.
The Pakistan Cricket Board, he pointed out, kept trying to fix things from the outside: “So many coaches have come and gone, so many things have changed just to try and help the Pakistan team. But no player has stood up and taken responsibility.”
Eventually, the board snapped. Yousuf is clear where he stands on that.
“PCB had to take a step that it did. I back what PCB did,” he said.
England tour exposes the fault lines
Those comments land at a brutal moment for Pakistan cricket.
In England, the team has been outplayed and out-thought. An innings-and-103-run defeat at Headingley. A 194-run loss at Lord’s. Two heavy blows, and still one Test left when the Pakistan Cricket Board decided it had seen enough.
Seven players were sent home mid-tour: Mohammad Rizwan, Imam-ul-Haq, Salman Ali Agha, Ali Usman, Khurram Shahzad, Aamir Jamal and Muhammad Awais Jafar. Seven replacements were summoned, five of them uncapped. Head coach Sarfaraz Ahmed and assistant coach Umar Gul were removed. The shake-up was as dramatic as it was rare, especially with a Test still to play.
The decision drew instant scrutiny. Timing, process, optics — all questioned. Yousuf, again, refused to sit on the fence.
Asked if the PCB was right to act with one match remaining, he replied: “Yes, there is no issue with when PCB have taken action. The Pakistan team is ninth in the World Test Championship standings. They are ninth because there are only nine teams in the table. Pakistan ka naam kharab ho raha hai (Pakistan’s reputation is getting ruined). So when that’s happening, the board has to take some steps to improve.”
He even hinted that the cull may not have been purely about form. “Something” inside the dressing room, he suggested, might have triggered the decision to send seven players back.
The message was clear: this wasn’t just about a bad tour. It was about a rot that had been allowed to spread.
‘It’s not just this one series’
Yousuf refuses to let anyone pin the crisis solely on the current England debacle. For him, the evidence has been building for years.
“I don’t see an issue with the PCB reaction. Because the team has been playing terrible cricket. It’s not just this one series against England,” he said.
He pointed back to the recent past, when Pakistan still reached big stages but failed to build on them.
They made the T20 World Cup final in 2022. They reached an Asia Cup final. Those runs suggested a team on the cusp. Yousuf, though, sees a different pattern when he looks at what followed.
“Since those finals, just look at the performances coming out of this Pakistan team,” he said.
The numbers back up the unease. Pakistan have struggled across formats. Earlier this year, they were swept 2-0 by Bangladesh — their second 0-2 series defeat to the same opposition after a similar result at home in 2024. Each setback has added fresh questions about leadership, selection and the broader direction of the side.
For Yousuf, the answers keep circling back to that one night in Dubai. To a win that should have been a launchpad, not a turning point into complacency. To a team that tasted history, then lost its hunger for the hard yards that come after it.
The scoreboard in 2021 read: India 151 for 7, Pakistan 152 for 0. A perfect chase. A perfect script.
And, if Yousuf is right, the moment Pakistan forgot what comes after the perfect script ends.
