Younis Khan hits the headlines as all-rounder for Yorks

KARACHI: Having recently denounced the Pakistan captaincy and announced his non-availability for Pakistan, at least for the forthcoming three-match One-day Internationals (ODI) series against Sri Lanka in Abu Dhabi, until recently the national vice-captain Younis Khan is hitting the headlines on the English County Cricket Championship circuit instead.

As the County Championship Division One match at the Rose Bowl in Southampton neared its close on the fourth and final day on Saturday, Hampshire had just lost skipper Shane Warne (33) as the team’s score reached 336 for eight in 91.3 overs. Yorkshire had set Warne’s side a huge victory target of 443 runs.

With two wickets in hand and at least an hour and 15 minutes left before the final draw of stumps, Hampshire still required another 107 runs. Yorkshire’s exceptionally strong position had been made possible by their newest signing from Pakistan — a man called Younis Khan.

The 29-year-old Mardan-born Younis, who had a modest short season with Nottinghamshire in the summer of 2005, has started 2007 with Yorkshire with a big bang. In his team’s match against Hampshire, he has attained a century in each innings — the second one was a double — and, to top it all, achieved career-best bowling figures with his rarely used leg-breaks.

In Yorkshire’s first innings of 299 all out, his contribution was 106 runs, made off 151 balls in just short of three and a quarter hours with 14 boundaries. In the second knock of 439 for four declared, Younis ended with 202 not out, having faced just 290 deliveries in about six and a quarter hours with 21 fours and a six.

Then, as Hampshire set towards their oursuit of 443 runs, Younis captured four wickets for 48 runs in 16 overs. He had never taken more than three wickets in an innings.

He started with former England Test player John Crawley’s (50) wicket and then also sent the next three batsmen home!

Younis has also just crossed the 8,000 runs mark in his 111-match first-class career. He has also made five other double hundreds in his 26 centuries, the first one being 202 in his seventh first-class match, for Peshawar against Sargodha at Peshawar back in March 1999 and the last a knock of 267 for Pakistan against India in the third Test at Bangalore in March six years later.

He has made a century in each innings once before. He did so while scoring 132 and 142 not out for Habib Bank against Peshawar at Peshawar in January 2000. These knocks were part of a sequence of four hundreds in successive innings.

Elsewhere at the County Ground in Northampton on Saturday, in a County Championship Division Two match, Northamptonshire beat Essex by six wickets.

Essex’s workshorse, the Pakistan leg-spinner Danish Kaneria, captured four wickets for 108 runs in 41 overs in the opponents’ first innings of 416 all out. In the second, when they reached 110-4 to win, Danish returned figures of 2-61 in 12 overs.

On Thursday at the StLawrence Ground in Canterbury, Kent’s Pakistan star Yasir Arafat brought them an innings win over county champions Susses, with a career-best score of 122 and bowling figures of 4-36 and 1-62. The Sussex team included fellow Pakistanis with big reputations — Rana Naved-ul-Hasan and Mushtaq Ahmed.