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| Younis took 373 wickets in his 87 Tests as a player [GALLO/GETTY] |
Former Test captain Waqar Younis has beaten his old teammate and fellow fast bowler Wasim Akram to the Pakistan coaching job.
Younis, 40, was announced as the replacement for Intikhab Alam on Saturday following a disastrous whitewash defeat in Australia early this year.
"We had a choice between Younis and Wasim Akram, but since Akram was busy with his commitments in media we decided to appoint Younis as the new coach,'' Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Ijaz Butt said.
The PCB had been looking for a new coach since Australia beat Pakistan 3-0 in Tests and 5-0 in the one-day series in January.
Lethal combination
Younis, who formed a lethal pace combination with Akram in the 90s, lives in Sydney and will be coming to Pakistan next week to take up his new assignment on a $7,600-a-week deal that runs to December 2011.
He took 373 wickets in 87 Test matches and 416 scalps in 262 one-day internationals before retiring in 2003.
He also led Pakistan in 17 Test matches and 62 ODIs.
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"Foreign coaches were demanding big money and were willing to work with our team only when it's touring some other country"
Ijaz Butt, PCB chairman
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Former batsman Ejaz Ahmed takes over as fielding and batting coach, while Alam becomes director of the country's cricket academies.
Butt said he had considered bringing in a coach from abroad, but that all the candidates were too expensive and unwilling to live in Pakistan.
"Foreign coaches were demanding big money and were willing to work with our team only when it's touring some other country," Butt said.
Younis is the fourth coach of Pakistan since the death of Bob Woolmer at the 2007 World Cup, with Talat Ali, Geoff Lawson and then Alam failing to revive them as a major Test power.
The team has been hamstrung by the inability to play matches at home since the visiting Sri Lanka team was attacked by gunmen in Lahore in March 2009.
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