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Former ICL rebel Mohammad Yousuf has returned to international cricket with a big bang by achieving the number-one position in the Reliance Mobile ICC Player Rankings for Test batsmen for the first time in his career.

Yousuf has toppled his captain Younus Khan to give Pakistan a 1-2 in the latest batting table for the first time since the player rankings were introduced in June 1987.

Yousuf, who won the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy as the 2007 Cricketer of the Year at the LG ICC Awards in Johannesburg, was second when he was removed from the rankings table early in 2009 as Pakistan had not played a Test match since before the qualification date for the rankings.

He is the only Pakistan batsman to have reached the 900-point mark after scoring 112 and 12 as Pakistan made a mess of things on the fourth morning when they lost eight wickets for 46 runs to lose the first Test against Sri Lanka by 50 runs while chasing a modest 168-run target.

Younus, who entered the Test 20 points short of becoming the second Pakistan batsmen and 25th overall to reach the 900-point mark, paid the price for his failures in both the innings of the Galle Test by not only dropping to second position in the rankings but by also conceding 30 valuable points.

Younus scored 25 and three and will now have to come back with strong performances if he has to regain his number-one spot and stay in hunt for the 900-point mark, which in ranking terms marks out a player as truly great.