Incidentally, August 14 marks the 69th anniversary of the founding of Pakistan. It could also well be the day that Pakistan end their four-match series with England all square at 2-2.
After Younis's superbly paced 218 turned out to be the cornerstone of Pakistan's first innings total of 542, Yasir Shah, the legspinner, snared 3 for 15 as England slumped to 88 for 4 in their second essay - still 126 runs adrift, with two days left in the game.
Younis noted that a victory in the fourth Test would be especially sweet. "Yes, it would be great and a gift to the nation if we win tomorrow," he said. "We have [them] four down, so we hope that the victory can be achieved on Independence Day. We had talked about this before the match."
Younis's sixth innings of 200 or more in Test cricket was a dramatic way for him to end his poor run with the bat. He had managed just 122 runs in six previous innings this series, with a best of 33 in Pakistan's first Test win at Lord's. In fact, Younis's poor form had again led to speculation that, at 38, his time in international cricket was coming to an end.
"A lot of people had started saying that my career is going to finish," he stated. "I have been hearing this for some 15 years now, but I am happy and did the hard work. I knew it would come, but I desperately wanted it to come in this Test."
Asked where this innings ranked among his 32 Test centuries, Younis said: "It must be at the top. We needed to win this Test so we needed a big innings and I am happy that I have done that."
Just as Asad Shafiq had done following his impressive 109, Younis dedicated his knock to Pakistan batting great Hanif Mohammad, who passed away aged 81 this week. "I want to dedicate this knock to Hanif Mohammad," he said. "He was always an inspiration to us and we are going to miss him. He had a great influence on my career and was always ready to give advice."
Meanwhile, Steven Finn, the Middlesex and England pacer, admitted that it would take something special to deny Pakistan victory. "Obviously, we face an uphill task," he said. "It's going to be difficult for us in this position, but we've found ourselves in these positions before."
Finn, who took 3 for 110 in Pakistan's first innings, paid tribute to Shafiq and Younis by saying: "The two guys who got hundreds played fantastically, negated us and got us tired - fielding 140-odd overs - and they reaped their rewards."
The veteran batsman, who has amassed 9,456 runs and notched up 32 Test hundreds, has been one of the bedrocks of Pakistan's batting line-up in the longest format of the game over the last decade. Finn, on his part, heaped praises on Younis and noted that he is a world-class player.
"Younis is a world-class player. To score more than 9,000 Test match runs and 32 centuries, that says something about the man. We knew he'd come to the party at some stage ... we were just hoping it wouldn't be in this series.
"Hats off to him. We threw everything at him; we threw short-pitched bowling, changes of angle on the crease, chopping and changing the bowling ... but he had answers for everything," Finn summed up.
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