Imran Khan: The Cricketer, The Celebrity, The Politician. Christopher Sandford
bowling which can ever have been inflicted at the Parks. The students put on 189 for the third wicket, 120 of them by Imran who, playing on the offside at one end and on the on-side at the other, struck the ball relentlessly to the near boundary, at least once with such force that it rebounded off the heavy roller half-way to the pitch. For good measure, he also took four wickets in the Indians’ first innings. Imran’s century was his highest score to date in first-class cricket. Eight days later, he broke his record with 170 against Northamptonshire. He then proceeded to dispatch the Northants middle order with three wickets in the first innings and four in the second. Imran was still bowling when Oxford won by 97 runs, having given one of the really great all-round performances.
Imran’s well-developed sense of self-respect might go some way to explain why, time and again, he and his bowling seemed to step up a gear when he had something particular to prove. An associated element of revenge — the Pathan principle of badal — was also observable deep in the mix. Most sportsmen, of course, talk about ‘pride’, at least as an abstraction, and virtually no pre-match press conference at any level of the professional soccer world would be complete without repeated references to the concept. But Imran took it to an almost messianic degree, and an ill-advised remark such as Boycott’s was apt to have roughly the same effect as lighting the touch-paper on a particularly spectacular firework. ‘Ten of us were just students together, playing a game,’ one of the Oxford team told me. Imran, by contrast, ‘came up with an antagonistic attitude, which in his mind turned any little slight into a life-or-death struggle. I wouldn’t say he always thought everyone was ganging up on him. That sounds a touch paranoid, whereas in my experience he saw things from a very clear cultural-historical perspective. From what I heard and saw of Imran, and charming as he often was, he had a definite thing about certain aspects of the mother country. As far as he was concerned, we were all essentially colonialist swine who had been screwing his people for centuries.’
Such was the general backdrop to Imran’s first match as captain against Cambridge, the university which had seen fit to shun his services two years earlier. It scarcely needs adding that his bowling proved a shade brisk for the opposition. Imran took five for 44 off 20 overs in the Cambridge first innings and five for 69 off 38 overs in the second. As a rule he was very fast, variable both in length and direction, with a preference for the ballooning inswinger, and desperately hard to score from. When he was short and on line a number of the Cambridge batsmen elected to take the ball on the body anywhere between the top of the pads and the general area of the forehead, if more out of necessity than choice. Not that Imran’s robust approach to the game precluded the odd moment of light relief, as when he saw fit to amble in once or twice and lob up a gentle leg break. One Cambridge batsman thought this to have been a prime example of reverse psychology on Imran’s part. ‘It bloody nearly worked, too, because one of our guys promptly lost his head and dollied up a catch, which was dropped.’ This had been ‘poorly received’ by the bowler. Pantomime then stalked proceedings on the third day, when Oxford were chasing 205 to win. They eventually needed just 61 off the last 20 overs, with half their wickets in hand. Imran’s ‘crystal clear’ instruction to go for runs was somehow missed by the Oxford No. 5, Edward Thackeray, who proceded serenely to 42 not out in just over three hours. Towards the end the general noise from the Tavern stand dissolved into an exasperated chant of ‘Wake up, Oxford’ and ‘We want cricket’. The situation was apparently no less trying to Imran, who could be seen pacing restively from side to side on the players’ balcony, occasionally pausing long enough to scowl or shake his fist towards the middle. After what was described as a ‘strained’ tea interval, he had resorted to thumbing through a copy of the laws to see whether Thackeray’s innings could be involuntarily declared closed. It couldn’t, and the match was drawn.
The team party, or post-mortem — there was no formal dinner — that evening was an equally stiff affair. For the most part, Imran (who left early to catch a train to Hove, where he was appearing for Worcestershire against Sussex) engaged only in uncomfortable small talk with his men, and chose not to dwell on the match at any length. Many silences resulted. At one point, apparently in an effort to warm things up, one of the less experienced members of the side reached over to the bar and offered his captain some champagne.
‘Thank you,’ Imran said. ‘I drink milk.’
Since 1971 Pakistan had been gradually returning to cricketing health, if not without the occasional relapse or well-publicised temper tantrum. The national team had a new bowler in Sarfraz Nawaz and a well-remembered one in Mushtaq. Asif and Zaheer were batsmen fit to set before the world. In 1972–73, when Imran was bedding down at Oxford, his countrymen had toured Australia and acquitted themselves rather better, both on and off the field, than the 3–0 result suggests. No side including Saeed Ahmed could be entirely incident-free, even so, and the selectors had been forced to draft in the all-rounder Nasim-ul-Ghani for the Sydney Test after Saeed refused to open the batting against Dennis Lillee. Pakistan had gone on to win and draw series against New Zealand and England respectively. Along the way, Intikhab Alam had been replaced as captain by Imran’s cousin Majid, who was considered an only modest success in the job. After three consecutive draws against England, Majid stood down and Intikhab returned for his third time in charge. ‘[The captaincy] is out of control … it’s a circus,’ the PIA president was heard to complain at a press conference in his office, throwing his pen so hard it bounced off the carpet.
The labyrinthine world of Pakistan politics, meanwhile, continued to be mirrored by that of its cricket administration. Abdul Kardar, the former captain of the national team, now combined his position as chairman of the BCCP with a cabinet office in the Bhutto government. In 1974, Bhutto and Kardar moved the headquarters of Pakistan cricket from Karachi to Lahore. They took the opportunity to rename the Lahore stadium after the self-styled ‘Glorious Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist Peoples Brotherly Libyan Army’ (and supporter of both the eventual South-East Asian nuclear powers, if not their cricket), Muammar al-Gaddafi, along with a gushing tribute from the Pakistani prime minister: ‘Today, to you, we say thank you … thank you, thank you, Glorious Guide.’
For what? some journalists wondered, no doubt in keeping with many residents of Karachi. Most of Bhutto’s government were involved in one way or another in the management of Pakistan cricket, although generally they restricted themselves to various pet schemes, such as their decision to honour the Libyan dictator, rather than the tedious business of day-to-day administration. Before and during Test series, therefore, when the BCCP should have been most active, its new office, a dim, green-carpeted room in the bowels of the Gaddafi stadium, was often utterly deserted — a condition which was only slightly improved even on the rare occasions when Kardar scheduled a meeting of the full ‘committee’, which consisted of a dozen or so Bhutto appointees based in Islamabad; more than once, the only people who bothered to show up were Kardar and a secretary.
It’s not clear to what degree, if any, the BCCP officials balanced their misgivings about Imran’s one Test performance to date with their apparent new-found preference for Lahore over Karachi, a bias which was to be reflected in a number of hotly debated selections over the next decade. Perhaps they simply felt that after three years he was ready to return. In either event Imran joined his colleagues midway through their 1974 tour of England. His first appearance, against Warwickshire, following just four days after the varsity match, came as a rude lesson in the comparative merits of student and representative cricket. Imran went for 126 runs off his 22 overs in the Warwickshire first innings. At one stage the opener John Jameson carted him for 50 in four overs. Rain then spared him any further indignity. The unimpressed tour manager, Omar Kureishi, promptly called the team together and read them the Riot Act, which ‘in no way dented Imran’s high spirits or self-confidence’, according to Kureishi’s then teenaged son Javed, who accompanied the side. ‘I remember him as this supremely cocky, long-haired guy who was tremendous fun to be around. Imran thought nothing of marching up to a senior player and telling him, “Your grip’s all wrong, chum”, or advising everyone on their fitness and diet. I once watched, fascinated, as he dropped two raw eggs into a glass of milk in a London restaurant and drained it off in one gulp. Very specific about things like that, Imran. Always finished his day off with a carrot.’
The tour management took the view that Imran’s jaded performance against