SPECTATOR SPORT
SOME FOLK will go to any lengths to pro- mote their new book. But in all publishing history no ruthless and inventive profes- sional publicist could have dreamed up the book-selling stunt which captivated Lord's and half the nation as the shadows length- ened over a golden Sunday evening at St John's Wood. If such a promotion is any- thing to go by, John Crace's new joint biog- raphy Wasim & Imran's Inheritors (Boxtree Press, £15.99) will remain top of the lists for aeons.
The old place staged Verity's Match, and Ramadhin and Valentine's. History already logs the Lord's Test v. India in 1990 as the most sumptuous feast (Gooch's 333, Azharuddin's century, Kapil's sixers, and Tendulkar's catch), and the 1966 draw v. the West Indies (Hall and Griffith, Close, and Cowdrey's broken arm) as HQ's umbrella-gnawer of the century.
But surely Sunday's dramatics were alto- gether more zanily topsy-turvy and, at the curtain, more spectacularly heroic. After the two Pakistanis, Wasim and Waqar, had voluptuously confirmed their pairing as fast bowlers deserving to be up on the same plinth with Lindwall and Miller, Lillee and Thompson (possibly, even, more lethal, with their left-right double whammy), they then ensured that their two names would be enshrined in tandem in the all-time Test match legend — as batsmen. It was a stu-
Lessons from Imran
Frank Keating
pendous victory.
Their mentor, Imran Khan, was there to see them do it. Crace's explosively topical new book vividly chronicles Imran's tute- lage. When Wasim joined Lancashire, when he was 21 in 1988, the then captain of Pak- istan, Imran, foretold the young man would become the finest all-rounder of his time and the best left-arm opening bowler of all time. When Waqar, not 21 till November, first joined Sutjey two summers ago, Imran said he could become the finest fast bowler of all time. Only Fred Trueman would scoff at that now with a typical dismissiveness.
Certainly the legend has not chronicled a more unplayable yorker than Waqar's. He seems to bowl his blockhole boot-cruncher almost at will. It is cruelly garlanded with a spiteful and unique late in-swing. Says the young man: 'Imran taught me the yorker. We were on tour in Sri Lanka and De Me11, the number nine, slogged me all over the place in the last few overs of a one-day international. Afterwards, Imran told me it was vital that I learn the yorker; he took me to the nets and showed me how to do it. I took a long time to master it, but I worked hard.' Says Imran: 'First I had him work on his fitness. I suggested he cut down on his run-up; he used to run miles and exhaust himself. Then his accuracy was worked on, because he was fairly wild to begin with. I told him the only way to improve was to keep bowling at a single stump. A batsman in the nets often distracts a bowler from his accuracy, and so Waqar would bowl for hours on end into an empty net.'
When the bewildered but determined young man arrived to try out for Surrey, Imran had also introduced him to his boot- maker in Northampton. He bought two pairs, bespoke, which set him back over £400. Last season, the Surrey secretary jok- ingly said at the beginning of the summer that he would buy Waqar another two pairs if he took 80 wickets in the Championship. It was no jest to Waqar. By the end of August, much to their surprise, the club received an invoice for two pairs of new boots from the Northampton cobbler.
Waqar also got himself a London agent, whom Crace quotes in his book: 'Up till now, in London, Waqar has been happy staying in the East End; I have a feeling he may be asking Surrey for a flat in Chelsea when he returns to the club in 1993.'
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