SPECTATOR SPORT
Boring the pads off
Frank Keating
CRICKETS irksome debate over ball- tampering resurfaces to bore the pads off everyone — although it must be admitted that the mix of Pakistani paranoia and trib- al animosities shaken and stirred into the English game's traditional evasion and humbug does sell newspapers.
The Mail on Sunday would not say how 'substantial' was the sum it chipped into the apparently reedy bank account of Younis Ahmed, the former Surrey, Worcestershire and Pakistan Test batsman and no stranger to London tabloids' dotty generosity when on the hunt for dirt about Pakistani cricket- mg practices. The broadsheets, it seems, are not so coy, and we are told that Imran Khan is paid £1,000 per column for his con- tributions to the sports pages of the Daily Telegraph. Seeing as these consist mostly of defences of himself, or other compatriots accused of ball-tampering, or variations thereon, it does seem the subject, if nothing else, represents good loot all round. Bucks as fast as the bowling. It is a shame that Imran (in his latest exclu- sive column on Monday) has announced his resignation from the cricket committee of the world game's governing body, the Inter- national Cricket Council. He retains the Presence to offer some corner-cutting clout m that particular corridor of codgers. As he says, and has been doing so ad tedium:
The honesty lies in admitting that these are common practices and not in fooling our- selves that cricket is a game played by saints. This is a form of self-delusion and is hypocrit- ical to boot. I admitted lifting the seam and scratching the ball because I wanted the issue of ball-tampering out in the open so it could be buried once and for all.
Some hopes. Yet cricket has been good (well, reasonably) at changing laws on the hoof — from 'Bodyline' to the Sunday League's swift reversion from 50 to 40 °vers. If only last year's excellent measure that has umpires inspecting the ball at the end of each over had been coupled with a return to the pre-1980 law which allowed bowlers to scuff the ball by rubbing it on the turf, then we would hear no more of this wretched teacup hurricane which quickens the blood only of headline writers and paying-out clerks in 'contributors' accounts'. Also, while at it, the cricket authorities should, as a nicely suspicious adjunct, ban the use of that revolting sun- block war-paint that the Australians Hugh- es and mates smear on their faces even on the most grey, drizzling of English mornings.
In Imran's biography, which caused all the latest fuss — another first-rate and fond- ly diligent job by Ivo Tennant — the para- graph which follows the throwaway line about the 'ball and the bottletop' strikes me as far more pertinent to the whole sorry episode. In it, Tennant quotes Imran:
Pakistan cricketers are treated somewhat like Islam in the West. Most of the time, such images are depicted by terrorists, fanaticism, veiled women and so on. Similarly, our crick- eters are looked upon as an undisciplined, unruly mob who pressurise umpires, cheat, doctor cricket balls, whinge about umpiring decisions and are generally unsporting. English umpires make mistakes, but Pakistani umpires cheat.
A very fair point, as any hanger-on around the dressing-rooms of the English shires can testify. For the poor bamboozled darlings of the English pastures must find some reason for being so dramatically laid to waste by the likes of the stupendous Waqar and Wasim.
A few pages further back in the book, there is another passing reference which is highly relevant to the Mail on Sunday's apparently expensive claptrap this week. In 1988, in the London Sunday People, the same Younis Ahmed, after being dropped by Pakistan, 'accused Imran of openly smoking pot and taking girls back to his hotel room on tour'. Imran, of course, denied such allegations. But old enemies remember, well, everything — especially old Fleet Street's gullibility and generosity.
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