LAHORE (The Thursday Times) — Former Pakistan batting great Mohammad Yousuf and former women’s team captain Sana Mir have been inducted into the PCB Hall of Fame for 2025, the Pakistan Cricket Board announced on Sunday, taking the roll of honour to 16 members.
Sana Mir, who last year became the first Pakistan woman to enter the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame, was included automatically under the board’s induction criteria. Yousuf was chosen through an independent vote by a panel of former players, administrators, and journalists: Zaheer Abbas, Ramiz Raja, Bazid Khan, Urooj Mumtaz, Saleem Khaliq, and Sohail Imran.
PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi congratulated both, saying they had represented Pakistan with great pride and earned a special place in the country’s cricket history.
Yousuf’s record year
Yousuf played for Pakistan from 1998 to 2010 and scored 17,300 runs in 381 international matches, with 39 centuries and 97 half-centuries. That includes 7,530 runs in 90 Tests at an average of 52.29, with 24 hundreds and a best of 223, and 9,720 runs in 288 one-day internationals.
His defining year was 2006, when he made 1,788 Test runs, with nine centuries, in 11 matches, passing Sir Vivian Richards’ 30-year-old record for the most runs in a calendar year. He scored 665 runs in a three-Test home series against the West Indies that year, a Pakistan record that went past Zaheer Abbas’ 583, and he was named ICC Test Player of the Year in 2007. He also captained Pakistan and later worked as a coach and mentor.
Sana Mir’s firsts
Sana Mir played for Pakistan from 2005 to 2019, appearing in 226 internationals (120 one-day internationals and 106 Twenty20 internationals) and taking 240 wickets. She captained the side in 137 matches, including the 2013 and 2017 Women’s World Cups and five T20 World Cups, and led Pakistan to gold at the 2010 and 2014 Asian Games.
In October 2018 she became the first Pakistan woman to top the ICC women’s ODI bowling rankings. She took 151 wickets in one-day internationals, with a best of 5-32, and was the first Pakistan woman to reach 100 wickets in the format.
They join Abdul Qadir, AH Kardar, Fazal Mahmood, Hanif Mohammad, Imran Khan, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Javed Miandad, Misbah-ul-Haq, Mushtaq Mohammad, Saeed Anwar, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Younis Khan, and Zaheer Abbas in the Hall of Fame.
