Former New Zealand pacer recalls funny incident involving Akmal, Yousaf

New Zealand’s former cricketer Iain O'Brien, in a YouTube video with Pakistan’s former batsman Faisal Iqbal on Thursday, recalled a funny incident between one of the Akmal brothers, without specifically naming who, and former legendary batsman Mohammad Yousaf.

The 43-year-old claimed that Yousaf was trying to calm the Akmals down whereas they kept hitting boundaries which made the interaction memorable.

“We had a bit of something. I won’t say it wasn’t grumpy; it wasn’t or was trying to unsettle. But that is what that was. I had good fun with Mohammad Yousaf, we had a good laugh the whole time. I wanted to get him laughing and not being so serious. We have had some conversations after that as well. The first thing he asked me was that are you still bowling bouncers? I bowled him a lot of bouncers,” O’Brien said.

“We had fun when we were talking to each other. He was batting with one of the Akmals. He [Akmal] was just whacking it everywhere. Mohammad Yousaf is telling him ‘araam say, araam say [Easy, easy]’. I am just laughing because there is no way. He [Akmal] just kept banging fours and sixes with big swings and there was nothing Mohammad Yousaf could do. It was just this kind of fun atmosphere,” he added.

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O’Brien represented New Zealand in 22 Tests, 10 One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and 4 Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is) while picking up 73 wickets, 14 wickets and 6 wickets respectively in each format.

It should be noted that Pakistan’s middle-order batsman Umar Akmal had been banned for three years in April, from all cricket, by Chairman of the Disciplinary Panel Mr Justice (retired) Fazal-e-Miran Chauhan.

Akmal had not requested for a hearing before the Anti-Corruption Tribunal, after he was charged for two breaches of Article 2.4.4 of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Anti-Corruption Code in two unrelated incidents.