You need your seniors: Younis

On a more serious note, he added: “Seniors are needed as their experience counts when the team is in a tight situation. Two or three seniors in a team can always guide youngsters.”

Asked whether Twenty20 format is making cricket more youth oriented, he said: “I don’t think so. Yeh koi badi baat nahin hai. Any senior can adopt. Sourav Ganguly or Sachin Tendulkar can comfortably play Twenty20.”

The Pak vice-captain said youngsters can often finish a match with a great performance, but they can also lose one under pressure. “Players like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid or Shoaib Akhtar have gone through pressure situations thousands of times. They know how to deal with them,” he said.

Expressing surprise over the omission of Dravid from the Indian squad for the first two ODIs, he said: “If India win, then okay. But if they lose, they will be forced to bring Dravid back.”

Pointing a finger at the administrators of the game in both countries, he said that India and Pakistan have to understand how to deal with seniors. “The juniors have to be groomed under them. When you replace a player like Dravid, Ganguly or Tendulkar you must have someone who can at least be 75 per cent of what these guys were,” he said, adding that India and Pakistan are trying to follow the Australians in this aspect but without the back up that the Aussies enjoys.

On the Indo-Pak series pressure he said: “International cricket is all about pressure. But I enjoy it. I just want to perform in a relaxed way.”

On his refusal to lead the team just before Pakistan left home for the ICC Champions Trophy, the vice-captain said: “I am not trying to stake claim to captaincy. I am here to support my team and all the youngsters.”

On the series strategy, he said: “We are not concentrating on any one player. India now have five to six match-winners, are we have to plan like that,” said the 30-year-old. He talked about “youngsters like (Robin) Uthappa, (MS) Dhoni, (Gautam) Gambhir and Yuvraj (Singh), all in good form.”

But the plan on-field will be different. “A ball comes in a second and goes. So, actually speaking no plan works at that time. Whatever plans you make remains in your mind. Like, I never think that I have to score a 100 because for that I have to face 140 balls. You have to go ball by ball.”

A warning, however, was sounded loud and clear. “I have always performed well against India. Even when I’m not in form, I strike form. I am sure I will do well this time around as well,” he said.

But he still subscribed to the idea of cricket being a “gentleman’s game”. “I don’t care about verbal aggression. You should concentrate on your game because that’s good for you, your team and your country. The battle should be with the bat and ball,” he said.