When Imran Khan took to off-spin!

Sumit Paul

NOW that Imran Khan is all set to become the PM of Pakistan, cricket lovers will remember him as a person who surprisingly never mouthed a single cuss word while playing for his alma mater and the counties! The great cricket scribe, late Christopher Martin Jenkins once wrote: ‘Imran abuses in Punjabi only when he’s skippering Pakistan cricket team.’

Imran never turned down a single offer to take part in charity matches including once for his Oxford teammate’s charity match while running high fever because of a toothache. But he didn’t complain. Even after retirement, a naturally out-of-form Imran would figure in friendly matches in Pakistan and England without charging money.

I was a witness to his down-to-earth nature when pursuing my MPhil from Lahore University in 2011-2012. Lahore University has an uninterrupted tradition since 1949 of arranging friendly matches between Pakistani students studying at the varsity versus its foreign students and faculty. Though I didn’t play, there were other British students and professors who comprised the ‘English XI’ versus ‘Lahore XI’. Imran never misses any match in Lahore as he hails from there. It could be a token appearance, but he’d come even for a few minutes. On this occasion, a British professor requested him to bowl an over! In his trademark salwar-kameez, Imran laughed and asked, ‘Should I play cricket in these clothes and after so many years?’ Then he confessed his age and told him that he was unable to bowl his lethal in-dippers.

‘Bowl gentle tweakers instead,’ suggested the professor. Imran relented and bowled a full over in his Pathan-suit; delivering beautiful, slow off-cutters and spin and taking a wicket, to boot! One of the greatest pacers of all time was bowling slow, innocuous off-spins! In his heydays, Imran would bowl at 91 mph and here he was bowling like Indian off-spinner Erapalli Prasanna and West Indian Lance Gibbs, Imran’s favourite off-spinner.

Unlike the aggression associated with pace bowlers, Imran never cursed his opponents. He even applauded Sunil Gavaskar in the Karachi Test in the ’77-78 series when he completed his second century of the match by fine-glancing Imran for a four. Imran was stunned and then began to clap with an admiring smile. The whole Pakistani team followed suit.

The concept of neutral umpires we see today was the brainchild of Imran Khan when he asked the Pakistan Cricket Control Board to invite Indian umpires VK Ramaswamy and Piloo Reporter to officiate in a Pakistan vs West Indies series.

Who can forget the sight of a crying Krishnamachari Srikanth being recalled to bat by the captain Imran when the former was convinced that he was not out? He was also large-hearted enough to call Gavaskar as two of the best batsmen he ever saw bat and bowled against. The other was the legendary Sir Vivian Richards.

Let’s hope the ‘gentleman cricketer’ would also become a gentleman PM and set as good a precedent as he set as a fiercely competitive but gentleman all-rounder during his cricketing days.