Sometimes a silent leader is a better one. I was reading a Wayne Rooney interview the other day and he said sometimes when his England manager Fabip Capello walks past him in the corridor he doesn’t even look at him or acknowledge he’s there. This builds a disciplined respect in people and keeps them on edge. You can’t go around laughing and tapping bums like Younis.

Once again, Kamran Akmal can lead by example rather than in any other way. As for Umat Akmal, he’d be a regular in my team. Though it’s a lot of pressure, Fawad needs to take this chance.

I agree, it looks weak on paper but the names we had on paper before were just names, they hardly did their names justice. As a result, this team is actually stronger.

I think Asif will excel and burst back onto the scene. If it was one place for the spinners, my choice would be Ajmal too.

When Yousaf stood in as captain for the first time it was against Australia in Australia and he scored a superb century against the best bowling attck the world has seen in the last few decades. While people may have reservations about the way he got captaincy but I think if he will be able to carry Pakistan’s batting on his shoulders he might prove to be better than Younis Khan. All the other things like his poor fielding lack of expression will become meaningless as whether captain or not he still will be in the team and will be fielding on the ground so it won’t make any difference. We have already seen under YK that the quality of being expressive and talkative on the field has very negligible effect on the the results the bottom line is that a captain of a weak team has to lead from the front.

As regards Akmal again he doesn’t have the personality to be a statesman but all the matches we won under Younis he played an important part in them and if he carries his T20/Odi form to test matches he will be fine.

Younis has announced that he will be back for the Australian series as I predicted. The selectors are reluctant to send Misbah but I think he will join the team in the 2nd test.

So the window for Fawad Alam or Umar Akmal to cement their place in the Test team is only one match. Have you noticed how systematically PCB saved Malik and Misbah, they never sent a timely replacement for Misbah as a result of which Malik will play the first test by default and Misbah will be joining the team in the 2nd test.

Any other board would have moved on but PCB doesn’t like change and for some odd reason prefers the staus quo as far as the core group of players is concerned.

This team looks bad on paper but if we look at it only Misbah and Younis are out who were badly out of form, the players who are likely to replace them are Fawad and Umar who have been scoring runs both in domestic season and international matches so in reality the team is only lacking star power. In bowling the return of Asif will make a lot of difference as New zealand will be scared to make pitches which will help their seamers. So overall the team is quite strong then the one which played in SriLanka.

Pakistan will probably play Asif, Umar Gul and Aamer but if they go with three seamers they can only play either Ajmal or Kinerea? Who would you like to see in the team my vote is for Ajmal.