Abu Dhabi: The man in the form of his life, Younis Khan, on Friday recollected the morale-shattering days after he was given the cold shoulder by Pakistan’s selectors for the limited overs series against Australia.

Younis, who scored a brilliant double hundred to put Pakistan in a commanding position on day two of the second Test here, revealed he was ‘extremely delighted’ to be amongst the runs, but added it also reminded him of his time of struggle.

“I can’t explain how I spent that particular week [when he was dropped from the one-day squad in September] as my family and friends were all tense and they were all wondering what I was going to do. They were afraid I might retire or something. But that one week was the major cause of motivation and I kept myself motivated,” said a beaming Younis, who asserted that proving his critics wrong was never on his agenda and he was just keen to do well.

“I am not here to prove anything to anyone. I just want to win games for my country and team after Pakistan lost four matches [the recent T20 match and three-match ODI series] to Australia. The intention was always there to help Pakistan.”

Younis, who has scored centuries in all three of his innings in the series against Australia, attributed his success to time he spent in Abu Dhabi in the run-up to the first Test.

“It was my good luck that I landed here in UAE a week earlier and worked a lot on my batting with the help of the batting coach [Grant Flower]. Luckily, I was batting around the Australians and had an opportunity to observe their body language within their practice and learnt a lot from it. So the week really made a difference,” said Younis, who hailed the way his skipper Misbah-ul-Haq went about his business en route to his hundred on Friday.

“It’s all about the combination and, if you look at the partnership, it was Misbah who scored 70 per cent of the runs as he was positive and was backing himself. The idea was to build big partnerships. I had contributed more runs when batting with Azhar Ali, then Misbah took over and it benefited the team.”

The veteran batsman also revealed that the crowd turnout also helped him in a big way. “It was really amazing playing in front of my countrymen. They motivated me and I’m happy that I made them happy with the runs. I was between 160 and 170 when my body started to go down and wasn’t responding much. Then when I saw people coming into the stadium I was pumped up again and wanted to score a double for them.”

Australia wicket-keeper Brad Haddin, who suffered a shoulder injury and was forced to leave the field twice, said: “It has been hard work, but I was proud of the way our guys went about it. No one threw in the towel. It was a pretty uncompromising wicket and we knew it was going to be that way for whoever lost the toss. Our guys kept fighting.

“Pakistan batted very well and they deserve a lot of credit. They were hungry for runs and hungry to bat a long period of time. It’s our turn now. We’ve got to make sure we apply ourselves and get stuck in.”