^ The title maybe a bit of an exaggeration but player power has sadly been the bane of our cricket all along. The PCB administrators are a bunch of jokers. What can you really expect from PCB when most people holding positions there are appointed because of their political affiliations rather than merit
We need a strong board with accountable honest administrators who can step in to resolve issues like the above. True YK did not help himself by not performing well in ODIs this year but the board should not have taken any nonsense from the lobbying players and supported Younus as skipper for the test series (which is Younus' main strength) against NZ. Besides stern action should have been taken against the three accused of deliberately throwing away their wickets in the last ODI against NZ.
Ijaz Butt is merely acting like a dictator. His appointment of YK, or even Mohammad Yousuf was made by himself and not thru a proper vote of board members.
Two more incidents from the past:
1. When in 1976, the players led by Mushtaq Mohammad demanded more fees to play in the Tests and challenged the board that they would not take the field in the Hyderabad Test against New Zealand, the then President of the board Abdul Hafeez Kardar, a former captain, gathered another eleven and warned the players that unless they withdrew their demands they would not be playing for Pakistan. The players backed down and a huge scandal was averted.
2. Similarly, when most of the stalwarts of the 1981-82 tour to Australia came back home, having played under a young Javed Miandad, they revolted against his brand of leadership and would not agree to play against Sri Lanka in the 1982 home series. That included Majid Khan, Zaheer Abbas, Imran Khan, Wasim Bari etc. Air-Vice-Marshal Nur Khan, the president of the board then who had initially appointed Miandad as captain, would not take it lying down and dropped all those not willing to play to bring in new players. Salim Malik was one of them, who on his debut at Karachi scored a century in the second innings and went on to become one of the finest batsmen of the country. Saleem Yousuf got his opening also because of the rumpus. The rebellious players, however, were back in the fold in the final Test at Faisalabad when Miandad himself withdrew from the captaincy but not before he had won the series to give Imran Khan the opportunity to captain Pakistan in England in the 1982 series.
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One could argue that player power won in the end as Miandad had to step down and all those 'rebels' only agreed to return when a new captain (Imran Khan) was named for the England series.