Younus keen to play against India

Karachi:

Injured Pakistan skipper Younus Khan is desperate to lead his team against arch-rivals India in the Champions Trophy match on Saturday and would not mind playing with pain-killers.

After suffering a hair-line fracture in his little finger of his right hand he was ruled out of Pakistan's first match of the elite ICC event against the West Indies.

"The doctors have advised me some rest for the injury to heal. But our next two matches against India and Australia are very important and I will try to play them even with the help of pain killer injections," Younus, who has been replaced by Shahid Afridi, said.

He also hoped that two-three day gap between the matches would allow him to recover.

Younus said India is a strong contender because of the its strong batting line-up but asserted that Pakistan had the weapons to deal with that.

"India has an edge over other teams because of their batting. They have Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid is back. But I believe we have the bowling to beat them this time in an ICC event," Younus said.

"When we played against India at the Centurion in the 2003 World Cup, we lost despite making 270 plus because unfortunately that day our bowlers couldn't get the wickets.

But our bowling is very strong and balanced now and we have lot of variety," he added.