SPECTATOR SPORT
THE PAKISTANI tourists have it in them to be the most dazzling and diamond-sharp side we have seen here for many a summer. With, for good measure, a leg-spin bowler from the top drawer who beguilingly boasts to you that he has three distinct types of googly — an airy, backhanded floater that tantalises the cover-driver; a spinning-top whizzer that can pin you plumb in front on the back foot as readily as it can gyrate the leg-stump into cartwheels; and a Quadir- type flipper which just keeps viperishly coming on at you.
Mushtaq Ahmed was just 17 and still at Sahiwal Comprehensive School when he first stood shyly at the end of his run-up finger-fizzing the ball from hand to hand waiting to bowl to an English batsman. It was December 1987, Mike Gatting's tour- ing side had just been routed in the first Test match at Lahore by the classic expo- nent of leg-spin Abdul Quadir (13 for 101), and now came up to Sahiwal to lick their wounds in a gentle three-dayer against the Punjab Chief Minister's XI. Some hope.
The boy Mushtaq bowled them out. He took six for 81. Once he had settled his nerves, his last 75 balls produced five wick- ets for 28. He did not bowl in the second- innings — on the direct orders of Imran Khan, who had summoned him there and then to proceed hotfoot to the Pakistan Test team's training camp and, school sum- marily over, a job with the United Bank.
Natural talent
Frank Keating
(The following match for England was the infamous Faisalabad Test when Gatting finally blew his gasket and Shakoor Rana became a household name.) Pakistan's cricketers (as well as their umpires) have always got up the noses of their English opponents. Not least, I sus- pect, because the players have such an opu- lent natural talent. Mushtaq is just one of umpteen cases in point. What right has a schoolboy to bowl out grizzled, seen-it-all professional grafters and then be pitched straight into the Test squad without putting in his time on the road?
The third Test I ever saw was at the Oval in 1954. It was Pakistan's first cricket series as a new nation. In three of the four Tests they seemed out of their depth and Eng- land patronisingly clocked them all over the shop. For the final Test at the Oval, I was allowed up to stay with Auntie Jo who kept a B & B in Pimlico. It was the first time I saw my beloved local hero, Tom Graveney, play in a Test. It was a low-scoring game on a wet and fast-drying Oval pitch. By mid- afternoon on the penultimate day of five, England went in for their last innings need- ing just 168 in three hours to win. A piece of cake.
The over-confident English sensed a day- off on the morrow. The captain, Hutton, came out flowing with strokes. Young Peter May made 50 as if he was disdainfully showing off to grandchildren on the beach. Both perished in the frolic — 'pacing' a slog-chase was not in the canon then. Eng- land, nevertheless, needed only 59 with seven wickets left. The free day was still on the cards, because Hutton sent in Godfrey Evans ahead of both Denis Compton and Tom to have a finishing bash. 'I'll moider 'em,' chortled the ebullient Evans as he jauntily passed down the steps and through the wicket-gate.
Evans made three. Then Compton couldn't even double that. Then, humilia- tion, my Tom got a duck (one less than he'd made in the first innings). England's last seven wickets fell for 35, the grand medi- um-pacer, Fazal Mahmood, had 12 wickets in the match, and Pakistan had won their first ever Test by 24 runs. I cannot explain why, but I can remember, vividly still, being suddenly transported with delight that my cocksure heroes had so spectacularly hit the buffers. I threw my school cap into the air at the final wicket and walked back to Pim- lico elated.
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