Batsmen Mohammad Yousuf and Younus Khan have been told they will never play for their country again after the Pakistan Cricket Board reacted savagely to the recent disastrous tour of Australia.
With Younus relieved of the captaincy in the lead-up to the Australian tour, and Yousuf installed in his place, Pakistan endured a woeful trip in all forms of the game, losing all three Tests, all five one-day internationals and the Twenty20 international.
And Yousuf and Younus weren't the only players to feel the PCB's wrath, with Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan both banned for 12 months and Shahid Afridi and the Akmal brothers, Kamran and Umar, all heavily fined and placed on probation for six months.
Acting on the recommendations of an inquiry committee set up specifically to analyse what went wrong in Australia, the PCB has effectively ended the international careers of Yousuf and Younus, two of the nation's finest batsmen of the past decade.
"Mohammad Yousuf and Younis Khan, keeping in view their in-fighting which resulted in bringing down the whole team, their attitude has a trickle-down effect which is a bad influence for the whole team, should not be part of national team in any format," the PCB said in a statement.
Having been appointed permanent captain in January last year, Younus resigned his post in October 2009 as a result of a political probe into match-fixing during his time in charge, even though he was cleared of any wrongdoing.
With Younus unavailable for the tour of New Zealand late last year Yousuf was handed the captaincy but the team lurched from one disaster to another, the worst result coming when it bowled Australia out for 127 in the SCG Test but then crashed for just 139 in its second dig to lose by 36 runs.