PCB optimistic that Younis Khan will attend the farewell function

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) expects World T20 winning captain Younis Khan to grace the farewell function being held in honour of the three former Pakistan captains. Younis had earlier announced that he wouldn’t be attending the function. According to an earlier report, the reason he gave for not attending the function in spite of being invited twice by the PCB was that he felt unhappy with they were being honoured four months after their retirement from international cricket.

Younis along with Misbah-ul-Haq announced retirement from international cricket as they hung their boots after the last Test against West Indies on the 14th of May. While Shahid Afridi too registered similar complaints with the board, he accepted the invitation following a conversation with PCB chairman Najam Sethi, thus providing his consent for the function. Misbah-ul-Haq, on the other hand, accepted the invitation gracefully without making any complaints.

PCB Chairman Najam Sethi’s statement

“We are hoping that all the three great cricketers will attend the function to further grace the occasion of the Independence Cup”, Sethi said. “We wanted to hold the function during an international series and now it is a perfect time to honour the great retired captains when 14 world-class players will be in Lahore,” he added.

Regarding the invitation given out to former Test players for attending the World XI games, he made it clear that the PCB had extended invitations to all the cricketers.

He said the invitation had also been forwarded to prominent former cricketers like Javed Miandad, Iqbal Qasim, Wasim Bari, Abdul Qadir, Shoaib Mohammad, Rashid Latif and Moin Khan among others.

Sethi said that when the foreign cricketers arrived in Lahore in the early hours of Monday for a noble cause hopefully former cricketers would also come to watch the matches to show solidarity with Pakistan cricket.