The first Australian bowler to get Younis Khan out in a Test was Brett Lee.
Brett Lee’s face is on the cover of the first cricket game I ever bought: EA Sports Cricket 2004, a PlayStation 2 game. Most of the players from that game are now retired, even the greats who were rookies at the time. Michael Clarke was a NSW player in that game, and now he’s a former international captain, sitting in the Nine commentary box.
Younis is also a former international captain, and for a time in 2009 and 2010 it looked like the last match of his career would be a match in which he captained, but he’s still going.
The reason for that is that the great batsmen often have an internal focus superseding that of the mere mortals of batting. While it hindered his captaincy, it is why Younis is still able to succeed now. He wanted that elusive century in Australia. He wants to be the first Pakistan batsman to 10,000 Test runs.
That’s not to say Younis doesn’t care about his team’s success, as he obviously does. His determination to improve his batting hasn’t prevented him from leaving a significant mark on the progress of Azhar Ali and Asad Shafiq, who will be carrying Pakistan’s batting when Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis decide to retire.
Jarrod Kimber called him a role model for young Pakistani batsmen, but it is simpler and more accurate to say he is a role model for batsmen. But while cricket is a team game, it also contains a far greater individual element than most team sports. The individual must be ready.
In a cricket game like the Cricket 2004 game, that readiness is taken for granted. Not with Younis. Many batsmen pull out late in a bowler’s run-up if they’re not ready.
In Brisbane, he pulled out of a ball that had already been bowled. That isn’t unheard of, but with Younis, it looked like he felt the ball he wasn’t ready for was an out-of-time note that had no place interrupting his stream of consciousness.
Even when he did get out in that second innings at the Gabba, he was ready for the ball, ready for the shot, but just mucked up a hard shot against a good ball from a bowler who had put him under pressure. It just looked worse because rationality tends to fly out the window when people see a batsman dismissed trying to play a reverse sweep in Test cricket.
The innings at the SCG wasn’t pretty. Younis never looked especially threatened, but he never looked especially comfortable either. On other days, the moving flick off Josh Hazlewood would have found Usman Khawaja when Younis was on 78. Younis was complicit in ending the survival of Azhar Ali.
But throughout, Younis survived. Misbah-ul-Haq, the only man in the Pakistan team older than Younis, played an innings of a man trying to live as he had always been able to, but like Michael Clarke at Trent Bridge in 2015, falling after showing that could no longer do so.
Misbah has stuck around this long out of a sense of duty. He didn’t consider it an option to retire before the difficult tours. But Misbah is one of the few men to whom cricket owes a debt and not the other way around. That he tried points to why he is, along with Imran Khan, one of the two great Pakistan captains.
Younis is still able to survive and live as a Test batsman. Hopefully, he continues to do so for a long time. Maybe, if he manages another 75 runs in this Test, the desire to do so will leave, and he’ll retire.
If he does, an Australian bowler no cricket game designed in the year 2004 will be the last Test bowler to dismiss him, and his dismissal may be commentated on by a retired player from a 2004 cricket game, in a losing Test series.
But if that does happen, that still won’t be able to take away from the century Younis Khan has been searching for since December 2004.
And he’s not out yet.
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