da betsul： Confusion continues to surround the reasons behind Mohammad Yousuf’sunavailability to play for Pakistan in the recently-concluded Twenty20four-nation tournament in Canada
Osman Samiuddin14-Oct-2008
Mohammad Yousuf was picked in the 15-man squad for the T20 Canada but couldn’t travel after he didn’t receive a visa in time from Canadian authorities © AFP
Confusion continues to surround the reasons behind Mohammad Yousuf’sunavailability to play for Pakistan in the recently-concluded Twenty20four-nation tournament in Canada.Yousuf was picked in the 15-man squad but couldn’t travel after he didn’treceive a visa in time from Canadian authorities. Cricinfo has learnt he has still not received back his passport, which is believed to be going through an unspecified review process.Remarkably, both Yousuf and the Pakistan board say they have not beengiven any concrete reasons over why his visa application should take anylonger than normal. All applications were made on October 7 and visas weregiven the next day. The team flew out the same evening. “I wasn’t toldanything about why there was a delay,” Yousuf told Cricinfo. “You willhave to ask the PCB.”The board, however, wasn’t in a position to shed further light. “At thetime the Canadian High Commission told us only that the visa was still inprocess,” Shafqat Naghmi, chief operating officer PCB, told Cricinfo. No one from the High Commission was available for comment.One well-placed diplomatic official said the board didn’t pursue the matter at all. “After the visa didn’t happen in one day, the board also didn’t pursue it at all,” the official told Cricinfo. “They dropped him immediately.”There was speculation also that Canadian authorities wanted to review pasttrips made by Yousuf to the country, where incidentally as Yousuf Youhana,he scored his second ODI hundred in 1999. “It could be that there are oldissues they are looking at, a visa he didn’t travel on or somethingsimilar,” a board official told Cricinfo.The matter, unfortunately, wasn’t pursued to any great degree by theboard, a lack of proper organisation and thus time – the applications weremade just one day before departure and the squad was finalised one daybefore as well – hampering efforts.If it is difficult to imagine a top cricketer from another country facingsimilar problems, it is more difficult still to imagine a cricket boardnot making a bigger fuss. “We got in touch with the Ministry of ForeignAffairs but they said the visa hadn’t been rejected and was just beingreviewed,” said Naghmi.The board’s inactivity is made more remarkable still by the fact that theyhave paid for and facilitated the trip for a number of journalists tocover the tournament. Though it is official policy, it raises the basicquestion of why the board could so easily ensure the presence of such alarge media contingent in Canada – some counts had the figure at 15 – butnot of arguably their best batsman.The situation comes against a backdrop in which Yousuf’s place in limited-overs cricket is being openly discussed, despite being a leading ODIscorer over the last two years. Though he was eventually selected in thesquad, he wasn’t in the initial list of probables. He was picked after helashed out at selectors for not considering him. He was also not picked last year for Pakistan’s squad for the Twenty20 World Cup.This latest setback aside, however, Yousuf says he has no intentions ofstepping away from the shorter versions of the game. “Why should I stepdown? We can’t tell the future but I want to play on in all three formatsof the game.