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A brilliant writeup from a real lover of Pakistan cricket..........
Have Pakistan's Cricket Team Been Caught Out?
By
Rob Smyth
The Guardian, Tuesday 31 August 2010
I was 16 years old when a cricket ball first spoke to me. In the moist English summer of 1992, the Pakistan fast-bowling pair of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis made the ball move so prodigiously in the air that even the oldest lags could not recall a relevant precedent. The stock eulogy was that they "made the ball talk". In my eyes it didn't just talk; it wouldn't shut up for three months.
And nor would we. This was like nothing anyone had ever seen. During the World Cup final in March that year, when Pakistan beat England, our English Lit teacher Mr Adams came in and announced that he had some bad news. While most assumed imminent detentions for an unspecified misdemeanour, he announced: "Wasim Akram has just bowled Allan Lamb and Chris Lewis with consecutive deliveries." The detail is almost offensively bald: they were among the most remarkable balls in cricket history, and effectively secured the World Cup for Pakistan for the first time.
Coincidentally, England were scheduled to host Pakistan that summer. As in the World Cup final, our batsmen had not a solitary clue how to cope with Pakistan's newfound ability to "reverse swing" the old ball at extreme pace, because they had never seen such skill before. (Please don't ask me to explain the technicalities suffice to say the ball would move late in the air in a way that made it almost impossible to play.)
As a consequence, the summer of 1992 was pockmarked by spectacular collapses, almost all of them by England. Stumps flew, balls boomeranged; England lost nine wickets for 102 runs and eight for 67 at Lord's, eight for 28 at Headingley, and seven for 25 at the Oval. Time after time their batsmen would be bowled or trapped LBW by unplayable balls vrooming violently towards the stumps. There has been never been such a devastating and sustained display of fast bowling in this country not even from the West Indies in their prime.
At the time, before its late 20th-century makeover, Test cricket was a sober, staid business, a rational experience rather than a primal one. Draws were the norm and runs and wickets came at a funereal rate. It's in that context that we must understand the 1992 Pakistan side, and particularly Wasim and Waqar: they played unimaginably sexy cricket. It widened the eyes and tantalised the senses like a teenager's first visit to a nightclub, or the first sip of a high-class scotch. So this is what life can be like.
It also began a torrid love affair with the Pakistan team that, in the case of this cricket obsessive, has endured to this day. It is hardly surprising: to fans of the English game, Pakistan are especially seductive because they are everything we are not: unfettered, emotional and exceptionally gifted. When they play England, it is naked talent versus honest endeavour. Vicarious bliss. They also invest thrillingly and unashamedly in youth. Pakistan are top of the list when it comes to Test runs and wickets scored and taken by teenagers, with 6,532 and 363 respectively. England are bottom of both lists, with 388 and 16.
There is no team in sport quite like Pakistan. With bat and especially ball, they prefer to leave the uncontrollable uncontrolled, to let the chips fall where they may. Watching their bowlers' effect a batting collapse, which they have done more than any other nation, is one of the great sensory overloads to be had in sport. There is a mood of gleeful anarchy and unstoppable mischief that cannot be replicated.
But, if sublime is one of their two default settings, the other is ridiculous. Out in the middle, there is no middle ground. This is a team steeped in tragifarce, who do not do orthodoxy or mediocrity. Pakistan make the little girl with the little curl seem like equilibrium incarnate. And their status as the mavericks' mavericks, a team who could not be boring if they tried, means the overwhelming emotion at the latest match-fixing scandal is, for me, one of sadness rather than anger. Certainly, it was not surprise, for Pakistan have been transfixed by misfortune and controversy for almost two decades now, ever since Mr Adams came in with his bad news.
Yet even allowing for the back story, how has it come to this? How is it that a Test series full of charm and hope has ended with such numbing emptiness? How is it that a nation clinging to cricket for solace at a time when floods are decimating the country are left to feel only shame? And how is it that Mohammad Amir, the most promising 18-year-old bowler most of us have ever seen, may never bowl another ball in international cricket?
The suspicion of Pakistan cricket goes back to 1992: it was their highest point, but also their tipping point. There had been contretemps before, of course most notably with regard to the perceived bias of Pakistani umpires, which exploded when England captain Mike Gatting was involved in his notorious finger-wagging spat with Shakoor Rana in 1987 but it was the series in England that made them outsiders.
Pakistani cricket had never been healthier than it was that summer. They had just won the World Cup for the first time, and had drawn their three previous series against the otherwise omnipotent West Indies a staggering and monstrously underrated achievement against a side who routinely thrashed everyone else. Pakistan then won a thrilling Test series in this country 2-1 and England, tired of slipping on the banana swing of Wasim and Waqar, responded with sour grapes. The whispers that Pakistan had illegally tampered with the ball to make it move so dramatically in the air became increasingly voluble, particularly when the ball was changed, without official explanation, during the fourth one-day international at Lord's.
Finally, Allan Lamb, England's South African-born middle-order batsman, accused Pakistan of ball-tampering in the tabloids and so began almost two decades of mistrust and controversy surrounding the team. Much of it has been merited; but equally much of it has been mired in casual, often unconscious racism.
Take, for example, the contrasting reactions to Pakistan's reverse-swing in 1992 (Wasim and Waqar must be cheating) and England's in the Ashes in 2005 (masterful craftsmanship by Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones). Such skewed conclusions can only partly be absolved by myopia and ignorance. But then again, to suggest that Pakistan have been entirely put-upon in their constant courting of controversy would be faintly ludicrous. Their story is an overwhelming and distressing mix of misbehaviour and misperception. Whether Pakistan cricket is institutionally corrupt or simply unable to escape its ripped genes is debatable; that it is a sorry mess is not.
Match-fixing has been the biggest bane. In 2000, when the South African captain Hansie Cronje was exposed and banned for life, there was a sad inevitability to Pakistan being dragged into the mix. Their former captain, Salim Malik, and second-string bowler Ata-ur-Rehman were banned for life, with a number of other players including the great Wasim Akram himself fined.
Hindsight suggests that this was Pakistan's great missed opportunity to clean up their game. Instead, there was little more than a cursory hoover. Judge Malik Qayyum, who presided over the investigation, even said in 2006 that he had been lenient with some players because he "had a soft spot for them" a confession of staggering negligence. And so the suspicions and rumours were allowed to fester unchecked until, finally, they exploded, in quite shocking fashion, during the 2007 edition of cricket's one-day World Cup, which was held in the West Indies.
The sudden death of Bob Woolmer, the English coach of Pakistan, only a few hours after his team's shock elimination by lowly Ireland, prompted an extraordinary overreaction: first it was officially announced as murder, then internet forums bubbled with the suggestion that one of the players had killed Woolmer, a disgracefully ludicrous scenario. Eventually, inevitably, it was formally confirmed that Woolmer had died of natural causes, yet that was not good enough for some. Pakistan cricket is far from innocent, but nor is it as guilty as some might have liked to believe then, and are suggesting now. The danger is that this can, and has, become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There have been so many other problems. Pakistan are the only team ever to forfeit a Test match (at the Oval in 2006) after their then captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq, refused to lead his side back on to the pitch following yet more allegations of ball tampering. They have even had a player suspended for tampering with the pitch. And last year, Pakistan were banned indefinitely from playing Test cricket at home after the visiting Sri Lankan team were fired upon by terrorists while travelling to a match in Lahore.
Yet none of the above were as sad as this latest crisis, and for one principal reason: the involvement of Mohammad Amir, a teenager of extraordinary ability. This corruption of innocence, of the youngest bowler ever to reach 50 Test wickets, feels something akin to seeing your first born being arrested. It's almost impossible to comprehend.
We do not yet categorically know whether Amir is guilty, or whether we will ever again have the abundant pleasure of watching him bowl at international level, but his involvement has altered our perspective of this case. The inclusion of one so young in such allegations of match rigging (no matter whether they did or didn't affect the ultimate outcome of the Test match) suggests this is infinitely more complex than a case of unforgivable deviancy; that instead, there is an insidious process whereby young cricketers are being snared, particularly when they are susceptible to financial inducements: a gift here, a platitude there, the net closing imperceptibly all the while.
Cricket has, across the globe, never been as affluent as it is now but not in Pakistan. The players were not allowed to play in the Indian Premier League, where participants earn three figures for every breath, because of cross-border tensions, and they are paid painfully little for representing Pakistan. The £4,000 cheque that Amir received through gritted teeth from the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Giles Clarke, for being Pakistan's man of the series against England was around three times the monthly retainer he gets from the Pakistan Cricket Board.
The game of cricket needs a healthy Pakistan, as anyone who has seen their Test matches against Australia and England this summer will confirm. Their on-field work possesses an almost blinding colour, but there is an even more powerful darkness off the field and, if these allegations are proven, the team has lost whatever credibility remained after its litany of past controversies.
Thinking back to that glorious English summer of 1992, when I first recognised the true joys of Test cricket courtesy of two extraordinary bowlers from Pakistan, I can only hope that now, finally, the issues that have beset this great cricketing nation for too long, immersing it in accusations both true and false, will be tackled and eradicated. And, most of all, that a sublime talent like Mohammad Amir will not be tainted forever. The alternative is far too depressing to contemplate. Say it ain't so, Mo.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
Have Pakistan's Cricket Team Been Caught Out?
By
Rob Smyth
The Guardian, Tuesday 31 August 2010
I was 16 years old when a cricket ball first spoke to me. In the moist English summer of 1992, the Pakistan fast-bowling pair of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis made the ball move so prodigiously in the air that even the oldest lags could not recall a relevant precedent. The stock eulogy was that they "made the ball talk". In my eyes it didn't just talk; it wouldn't shut up for three months.
And nor would we. This was like nothing anyone had ever seen. During the World Cup final in March that year, when Pakistan beat England, our English Lit teacher Mr Adams came in and announced that he had some bad news. While most assumed imminent detentions for an unspecified misdemeanour, he announced: "Wasim Akram has just bowled Allan Lamb and Chris Lewis with consecutive deliveries." The detail is almost offensively bald: they were among the most remarkable balls in cricket history, and effectively secured the World Cup for Pakistan for the first time.
Coincidentally, England were scheduled to host Pakistan that summer. As in the World Cup final, our batsmen had not a solitary clue how to cope with Pakistan's newfound ability to "reverse swing" the old ball at extreme pace, because they had never seen such skill before. (Please don't ask me to explain the technicalities suffice to say the ball would move late in the air in a way that made it almost impossible to play.)
As a consequence, the summer of 1992 was pockmarked by spectacular collapses, almost all of them by England. Stumps flew, balls boomeranged; England lost nine wickets for 102 runs and eight for 67 at Lord's, eight for 28 at Headingley, and seven for 25 at the Oval. Time after time their batsmen would be bowled or trapped LBW by unplayable balls vrooming violently towards the stumps. There has been never been such a devastating and sustained display of fast bowling in this country not even from the West Indies in their prime.
At the time, before its late 20th-century makeover, Test cricket was a sober, staid business, a rational experience rather than a primal one. Draws were the norm and runs and wickets came at a funereal rate. It's in that context that we must understand the 1992 Pakistan side, and particularly Wasim and Waqar: they played unimaginably sexy cricket. It widened the eyes and tantalised the senses like a teenager's first visit to a nightclub, or the first sip of a high-class scotch. So this is what life can be like.
It also began a torrid love affair with the Pakistan team that, in the case of this cricket obsessive, has endured to this day. It is hardly surprising: to fans of the English game, Pakistan are especially seductive because they are everything we are not: unfettered, emotional and exceptionally gifted. When they play England, it is naked talent versus honest endeavour. Vicarious bliss. They also invest thrillingly and unashamedly in youth. Pakistan are top of the list when it comes to Test runs and wickets scored and taken by teenagers, with 6,532 and 363 respectively. England are bottom of both lists, with 388 and 16.
There is no team in sport quite like Pakistan. With bat and especially ball, they prefer to leave the uncontrollable uncontrolled, to let the chips fall where they may. Watching their bowlers' effect a batting collapse, which they have done more than any other nation, is one of the great sensory overloads to be had in sport. There is a mood of gleeful anarchy and unstoppable mischief that cannot be replicated.
But, if sublime is one of their two default settings, the other is ridiculous. Out in the middle, there is no middle ground. This is a team steeped in tragifarce, who do not do orthodoxy or mediocrity. Pakistan make the little girl with the little curl seem like equilibrium incarnate. And their status as the mavericks' mavericks, a team who could not be boring if they tried, means the overwhelming emotion at the latest match-fixing scandal is, for me, one of sadness rather than anger. Certainly, it was not surprise, for Pakistan have been transfixed by misfortune and controversy for almost two decades now, ever since Mr Adams came in with his bad news.
Yet even allowing for the back story, how has it come to this? How is it that a Test series full of charm and hope has ended with such numbing emptiness? How is it that a nation clinging to cricket for solace at a time when floods are decimating the country are left to feel only shame? And how is it that Mohammad Amir, the most promising 18-year-old bowler most of us have ever seen, may never bowl another ball in international cricket?
The suspicion of Pakistan cricket goes back to 1992: it was their highest point, but also their tipping point. There had been contretemps before, of course most notably with regard to the perceived bias of Pakistani umpires, which exploded when England captain Mike Gatting was involved in his notorious finger-wagging spat with Shakoor Rana in 1987 but it was the series in England that made them outsiders.
Pakistani cricket had never been healthier than it was that summer. They had just won the World Cup for the first time, and had drawn their three previous series against the otherwise omnipotent West Indies a staggering and monstrously underrated achievement against a side who routinely thrashed everyone else. Pakistan then won a thrilling Test series in this country 2-1 and England, tired of slipping on the banana swing of Wasim and Waqar, responded with sour grapes. The whispers that Pakistan had illegally tampered with the ball to make it move so dramatically in the air became increasingly voluble, particularly when the ball was changed, without official explanation, during the fourth one-day international at Lord's.
Finally, Allan Lamb, England's South African-born middle-order batsman, accused Pakistan of ball-tampering in the tabloids and so began almost two decades of mistrust and controversy surrounding the team. Much of it has been merited; but equally much of it has been mired in casual, often unconscious racism.
Take, for example, the contrasting reactions to Pakistan's reverse-swing in 1992 (Wasim and Waqar must be cheating) and England's in the Ashes in 2005 (masterful craftsmanship by Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones). Such skewed conclusions can only partly be absolved by myopia and ignorance. But then again, to suggest that Pakistan have been entirely put-upon in their constant courting of controversy would be faintly ludicrous. Their story is an overwhelming and distressing mix of misbehaviour and misperception. Whether Pakistan cricket is institutionally corrupt or simply unable to escape its ripped genes is debatable; that it is a sorry mess is not.
Match-fixing has been the biggest bane. In 2000, when the South African captain Hansie Cronje was exposed and banned for life, there was a sad inevitability to Pakistan being dragged into the mix. Their former captain, Salim Malik, and second-string bowler Ata-ur-Rehman were banned for life, with a number of other players including the great Wasim Akram himself fined.
Hindsight suggests that this was Pakistan's great missed opportunity to clean up their game. Instead, there was little more than a cursory hoover. Judge Malik Qayyum, who presided over the investigation, even said in 2006 that he had been lenient with some players because he "had a soft spot for them" a confession of staggering negligence. And so the suspicions and rumours were allowed to fester unchecked until, finally, they exploded, in quite shocking fashion, during the 2007 edition of cricket's one-day World Cup, which was held in the West Indies.
The sudden death of Bob Woolmer, the English coach of Pakistan, only a few hours after his team's shock elimination by lowly Ireland, prompted an extraordinary overreaction: first it was officially announced as murder, then internet forums bubbled with the suggestion that one of the players had killed Woolmer, a disgracefully ludicrous scenario. Eventually, inevitably, it was formally confirmed that Woolmer had died of natural causes, yet that was not good enough for some. Pakistan cricket is far from innocent, but nor is it as guilty as some might have liked to believe then, and are suggesting now. The danger is that this can, and has, become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There have been so many other problems. Pakistan are the only team ever to forfeit a Test match (at the Oval in 2006) after their then captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq, refused to lead his side back on to the pitch following yet more allegations of ball tampering. They have even had a player suspended for tampering with the pitch. And last year, Pakistan were banned indefinitely from playing Test cricket at home after the visiting Sri Lankan team were fired upon by terrorists while travelling to a match in Lahore.
Yet none of the above were as sad as this latest crisis, and for one principal reason: the involvement of Mohammad Amir, a teenager of extraordinary ability. This corruption of innocence, of the youngest bowler ever to reach 50 Test wickets, feels something akin to seeing your first born being arrested. It's almost impossible to comprehend.
We do not yet categorically know whether Amir is guilty, or whether we will ever again have the abundant pleasure of watching him bowl at international level, but his involvement has altered our perspective of this case. The inclusion of one so young in such allegations of match rigging (no matter whether they did or didn't affect the ultimate outcome of the Test match) suggests this is infinitely more complex than a case of unforgivable deviancy; that instead, there is an insidious process whereby young cricketers are being snared, particularly when they are susceptible to financial inducements: a gift here, a platitude there, the net closing imperceptibly all the while.
Cricket has, across the globe, never been as affluent as it is now but not in Pakistan. The players were not allowed to play in the Indian Premier League, where participants earn three figures for every breath, because of cross-border tensions, and they are paid painfully little for representing Pakistan. The £4,000 cheque that Amir received through gritted teeth from the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Giles Clarke, for being Pakistan's man of the series against England was around three times the monthly retainer he gets from the Pakistan Cricket Board.
The game of cricket needs a healthy Pakistan, as anyone who has seen their Test matches against Australia and England this summer will confirm. Their on-field work possesses an almost blinding colour, but there is an even more powerful darkness off the field and, if these allegations are proven, the team has lost whatever credibility remained after its litany of past controversies.
Thinking back to that glorious English summer of 1992, when I first recognised the true joys of Test cricket courtesy of two extraordinary bowlers from Pakistan, I can only hope that now, finally, the issues that have beset this great cricketing nation for too long, immersing it in accusations both true and false, will be tackled and eradicated. And, most of all, that a sublime talent like Mohammad Amir will not be tainted forever. The alternative is far too depressing to contemplate. Say it ain't so, Mo.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2010
