In the midst of the Pakistani national celebrations, Imran left for Australia and his second and final season with World Series Cricket. The ‘circus’ eventually folded with a drawn Supertest between the West Indies and Australia, a subsequent would-be climactic one-day bash being washed out. On 30 May 1979, Packer announced the terms of an agreement with the Australian board, which gave him the exclusive rights to broadcast home Test matches as well as certain other marketing privileges. The 21-year-old Mark Nicholas, future Hampshire captain and doyen of Channel 4’s cricket coverage, was then playing club cricket in New South Wales and told me he watched every WSC match. ‘Imran made an immense impression. It was the aura, the stature, the mane, the staggering looks and the unbridled talent. His dramatic action, the approach, the leap and the follow-through were all pure theatre. He wasn’t swinging the ball so much by then but, God, he was good — and stylish in a way even other fast bowlers could only dream of.’
Fresh from his Packer triumphs, Imran went straight to the generally less charged atmosphere of a three-Test tour by Pakistan of New Zealand. He added five more wickets in the first innings at Napier, favouring the Kiwis with a generous quota of throat balls, but otherwise recalls the series, which Pakistan won 1–0, as ‘rather boring [and] inconsequential’. As such, it may have been a welcome relief from his recent experiences on and off the cricket field. Of these, Wasim Raja recalled, ‘There were times [after the India series] when Imran didn’t want to step outside, because he knew he’d be mobbed by fans and reporters. It took a lot of guts. And once he did he put on this front of being friendly and patient with all the bores, who must have driven him nuts.’ One night in Auckland, safely back in the team hotel following a sparsely attended stroll through the city’s streets, Imran exclaimed, ‘No one hassled me!’
If Pakistan’s fanatically supported series with India had been distinguished by its ‘courtesy and decorum’, as Zaheer Abbas says, a noticeably different tone prevailed when they agreed to a hurriedly arranged, two-Test tour of Australia in March 1979. In its quest to drum up support for the series — and sell papers — the home press made much of the residual ill-feeling between the Packer and non-Packer contingents, who would be playing each other for the first time in Australia. The resulting atmosphere, Imran reports, ‘was as ugly as I ever knew in my career’. Asif Iqbal perhaps didn’t help matters by adding his own version of Tony Greig’s ill-advised ‘grovel’ remarks, insisting that the Australian team were ‘no better [than] schoolboy level’. This was generally thought to have been counter-productive both to Pakistan and to Asif himself, who would spend much of his time at the crease fending off short-pitched deliveries from the general vicinity of his throat.
In the first Test at Melbourne, Javed Miandad ran out Rodney Hogg when the latter inadvertently strayed out of his crease to inspect the pitch. Imran described the incident as ‘quite funny in its way’ and perhaps not untypical of Javed, whom he characterises as a ‘gutsy guy, but with a major inferiority complex — very into statistics … someone who combined great passion with that scrappy, street-cricket approach to the game’. Hogg’s response was to initiate a briefly popular practice among disgruntled batsmen by smashing his stumps on his way back to the pavilion. The Australian bowler Alan Hurst then provided a rare example of cricket’s so-called ‘Mankad’ dismissal by running out Sikander Bakht when Sikander backed up too enthusiastically in the course of the second Test at Perth. At that, Sikander’s partner Asif demolished his own wicket in protest. Some time later, the home batsman Andrew Hilditch courteously picked up the ball and lobbed it to Sarfraz, the bowler, after an innacurate return throw from the field. Sarfraz appealed and Hilditch was given out for handling.
Meanwhile, Pakistan won the first Test — again thanks largely to Sarfraz, who took nine for 86, including a spell of seven wickets for one run, in the Australian second innings. He was another of those uniquely gifted and self-assertive characters who seem to be a speciality of Pakistan. In his autobiography, Imran would write warmly of the versatile ‘Sarf’ that ‘he taught me more about swing bowling than anybody. He is a bit of a loner [but] I always felt he tried his best for the team.’ Twenty-five years after he said this, Imran, while again paying fulsome tribute to his old colleague’s technical prowess, added that Sarfraz had been ‘a misfit’ who was ‘chiefly concerned with himself’, by no means the strongest words aired on the subject. Australia went on to win the Perth Test, and thus tie the series. Imran was carrying a back strain and consequently not at his best. In the six months from September 1978 to March 1979 he’d gone directly from playing in the English Gillette Cup final to the Pakistani Test training camp and from there to three international series staged in three different countries, while somehow also appearing in the gruelling day-night regimen of World Series Cricket. But the physical slog was only part of Imran’s ‘steadily growing sense [of] unease’ about certain aspects of the Test side, which had seemingly lost momentum only weeks after the historic victory over India. As usual, Wasim Raja remarked, Pakistan’s star ‘always appeared to be either rising or falling, never just staying still’; this wasn’t a side to make a virtue out of consistency. There had again been running disagreements in Australia between Imran and his captain Mushtaq, who the former believes had become ‘increasingly defensive and nervous as his own form deteriorated’. The national selectors appear to have broadly shared this assessment. Later that spring Mushtaq, suffering a finger sprain and something of an attendant decline of potency as a spin bowler, was replaced by Asif, who would find it every bit as hard as his predecessor to consistently blend 11 individually talented cricketers into a united team.
Perhaps it was fated that the one constant factor of the 1979 World Cup, held, like its predecessor, in England, was the atrocious weather. It was the wettest early summer for years, with disastrous consequences for all eight sides’ preparations, although for those arriving direct from the likes of Pakistan the shock was ‘physical — like being dropped in an ice-cold bath’ in Wasim Raja’s vivid phrase.
Imran is a natural enthusiast, but even he acknowledged that Pakistan’s World Cup campaign seemed to lack something in team spirit or, more bluntly, that ‘we folded under pressure’. Asif’s side saw off Canada and Australia in the tournament’s early stages, but self-destructed in the tie against England at Leeds. Chasing a modest 165 in 60 overs, Pakistan, with vociferous support from much of the crowd, began well enough. With Majid in apparently sparkling form, and Willis in a generous mood, a target of a run every other ball was always on. When the score was 27 for no wicket, the live BBC coverage of the match broke away to broadcast a race from Epsom. By the time the cricket transmission resumed 20 minutes later, Pakistan were 34 for six. Coming in at No 9, Imran played a self-denyingly stubborn knock of 21, but ran out of partners. Against all expectation, England won the match by 14 runs. A number of the Pakistani expatriate community gave voice to their frustration that night outside their team’s hotel. In the days ahead, Imran would frequently find himself being asked why he hadn’t simply hit the English bowlers out of the ground to win the tie, a line of enquiry to which he responded with unfailing courtesy.
Despite the loss Pakistan advanced to the semi-final, where they met the West Indies at The Oval. Once again, Imran records, ‘we cracked under the strain’. Chasing 293, Pakistan were 176 for one with Majid and Zaheer in full cry. Viv Richards, of all people, then took three wickets with his innocuous off spin, precipitating another Leeds-like collapse. The West Indies won by 43 runs and went on to lift the cup. It’s not difficult to imagine with what delight the Pakistani team, after more than ten hours’ cricket, then settled in to their London hotel for another night of loud abuse shouted at their windows. Back home, the euphoria of the Indian series gave way to a critical press reaction bordering on a hate campaign against some of the senior players, Imran prominently included.
Back in Sussex, he sometimes displayed what were called ‘royalist tendencies’ in stark contrast to
the easy informality of most of the rest of the club. Nicknames were mandatory in the Hove dressing-room, as they were elsewhere. The man who was cheerfully addressed as ‘Immy’ to his face, which was bad enough, was now called ‘the Great Khan’ behind his back. At least one county colleague thought him ‘somewhat limited in humour’, although the name had less to do with any pomposity per se than with Imran’s princely looks and what they all saw as a tendency for him to ‘simply vanish at the close of play [rather] than sitting around playing dominoes in the pub’. Imran himself was sufficiently unsure of his prospects at Sussex in 1979 to later write that ‘it became quite clear that they were thinking of releasing me’, something I was authoritatively told was ‘balls’. The county then had four overseas signings on their books, Imran, Javed, Garth le Roux and Keppler Wessels, only two of whom, under the TCCB regulations, could play at any one time. At the end of the 1979 season Javed left Sussex for Glamorgan, and the mercurially talented Wessels would prove neither as consistent nor as fit as some on the cricket committee had hoped. Under the circumstances, it was a reasonably safe bet that the county would somehow find a place for the man who was arguably the world’s fastest bowler. One team-mate went away from a match against Middlesex in which Imran had ‘pulverised them with the ball and then whacked their own attack into the street’ with the strange impression that the Great Khan was ‘actually a bit insecure’. He also sensed the faint air of anxiety and suspiciousness that others had seen at Worcester. ‘He was basically not a confident man. Never thought he’d be picked for the next game. To put it mildly, the [club] were happy to have him, but in Imran’s mind there was always a plot going on to get rid of him.’
Nothing reflects better this schizophrenic turn of affairs than Imran’s playing figures for the second half of the 1979 season. He made his first appearance for Sussex at home against Hampshire immediately following Pakistan’s exit from the World Cup. Coming in at No. 5, Imran scored 154 not out and then took six for 37 to send the visitors home a day early. That was in the last week of June. Before July was out the Sussex committee were quietly debating whether, far from sacking Imran, they should appoint him county captain after Arnold Long privately signalled his intention to retire in 1980. Although the bauble went elsewhere, the very fact that it was discussed seems to refute Imran’s suggestion that the club were anything less than delighted to have his services. He continued to give what the file calls ‘uniform satisfaction with bat and ball’.
Against Surrey at Hove, Imran took five for 33 in 15 overs of what Graham Roope described as ‘non-stop improvisation. He’d let you have three screaming deliveries all coming at you from different angles, and then a fourth one that went straight. It was the sucker punch. The ball that got the batsman out was the one that did nothing at all.’ Imran followed this up with figures of four for 64 and five for 50 against Middlesex. This gave him 600 career first-class wickets, not that he was counting them — there may never have been a less statistically minded bowler. Imran seems to have enjoyed playing Middlesex. Some 30 years later, Paul Parker dwelt fondly on the memory of the delivery which accounted for their batsman Graham Barlow in a fixture at Lord’s. According to Parker, Barlow had been playing a typically gritty innings, shoving out his pad and disdainfully ignoring anything a fraction outside the stumps. ‘Out of nowhere, Imran suddenly produced this booming reverse swing. No one saw it coming, least of all the batsman, who again shouldered arms. At the last split second the ball shot back and hit the top of his off stump. As Barlow reluctantly took his leave Imran strolled up, beaming, and said to us, “That was a clever trick”.’
I spoke to several of Imran’s colleagues at Sussex, most of whom broadly agreed with Neil Lenham’s assessment that he’d been ‘a good team man in his way’. The 21-year-old fast bowler Tony Pigott was just coming into the side in 1979. ‘Lester’, as he was inevitably known, remarked that the impassioned little pep talks favoured by certain other players weren’t Imran’s style. ‘He wasn’t the sort of guy to sit down next to you in the dressing-room and offer any encouragement,’ Pigott said. ‘As a fellow bowler, you could literally wait all day for a word of advice. But then again, just watching him in action was an education.’ There appears to have been a general consensus that Imran didn’t necessarily react well to criticism. On occasion he took abrupt offence where none was intended. Following one tactical post-mortem after a Sussex defeat, Imran left the room ‘in a royal huff’, evidently, ‘even though no one had said a word against him’. He apparently saw something in the overall discussion as an attempt to point the finger of blame at him for the loss, or possibly he just disagreed with the whole tone of the thing. Another colleague who was present adds that Imran had made his departure with ‘a glacial stare [rather] than any locker banging’, and that this had made the protest all the more effective. ‘I genuinely sympathised with him. After you’ve bowled out the Aussies in front of 80,000 people at Melbourne, it can’t be easy listening to a bollocking in the Hove dressing-room from Arnold Long.’
Imran told me that his main reservation about county cricket as a whole remained simply that ‘it was too defensive. There wasn’t enough passion. You had certain players whose top priority was to keep their head down and secure their contract for the next season. There were times when they were literally praying for rain so they could stay in the dressing-room playing cards.’
In theory, Imran found English domestic cricket on the bland side. In practice, he found it all too robust, at least when it came to the matter of sledging. A Sussex player told me of a racially charged epithet the Yorkshire close fielders had once chosen to make when Imran came out to bat at Leeds. The original remark, while not enlightened, had sparked a ‘truly spectacular’ response, which had seemed to impress even that hardbitten home audience. Imran recalled that right through into the 1980s there had been occasional ‘mutterings’ from certain quarters when he appeared on the field. As a whole, these still inclined to the familiar ‘curry’ or ‘Paki’ references, and weren’t necessarily restricted to his fellow cricketers. Imran reacted to one such comment from the crowd while batting for Sussex at Worcester by promptly smashing the ball for six into the section of the ground from which the offending phrase had come. Depending on one’s perspective, he could come across as fiercely proud or mildly paranoid; either way, a number of his Sussex team-mates describe him as a forbidding, occasionally aloof, character. ‘I wouldn’t say Imran was hail-fellow-well-met,’ adds one long-time colleague. ‘He basically had two close mates at Hove, Garth le Roux and Gehan Mendis. He was intensely loyal to both. Immy thought the Test selectors ignored Mendis after he qualified for England because of colour prejudice.’
Imran ended the English season in a three-day match against Somerset at Hove. He took one for 40 in the visitors’ first innings and six for 53 in the second. The then 22-year-old Somerset batsman Nigel Popplewell told me ruefully that ‘notwithstanding my father’s influence in enabling Imran to move to Sussex in the first place, I didn’t get much reflected sympathy … He came tearing up the hill at Hove and bowled at 95 miles an hour in the evening gloom, which was my baptism in county cricket. The thing about Imran was, you could tell when he was really trying because he crouched in his run-up before exploding into his slightly swingy action. If you saw him crouching, you really knew you were in trouble.’
A number of opposing batsmen had that feeling about Imran in 1979. He finished the season with 73 first-class wickets at an average of just under 15; not coincidentally, Sussex rose to a creditable fourth in the table.
During his playing days, Imran was a man absorbed equally with substance and image. He was also a man who desperately wanted to be appreciated, even loved. All professional sportsmen pay attention to what the media say about them, but none more so than Imran did in mid-career. Pakistan’s self-inflicted failure in the 1979 World Cup coincided with, or perhaps triggered, a growing tendency on the part of the press to explain every disappointment on the playing
field in terms of the players’ extracurricular activities. And that chiefly meant Imran’s. As every journalist in Pakistan knew, the public was fascinated with the Great Khan’s private life, ‘with the scope of its dramatic deeds, the amazing range of its celebrity couplings and the considerable body of contradictions it indulges’, to quote the expatriate Star. It might be going too far, but if so not going entirely in the wrong direction, to say that much of the Pakistani media was clinically obsessed with Imran’s sex life. His every rumoured relationship was immediate front-page material. At least one Karachi daily paper maintained a ‘nooky watch’ on his behalf. By 1979 long-time broadcasters such as Omar Kureishi and a new generation of rabidly ambitious tabloid journalists had made the Test team the centre of the nation’s civic life. As a result, ‘when we succeded, we were gods; when we failed, the devil incarnate,’ Imran wryly noted to an English friend. After the bland and often catatonically boring Pakistani cricket scene of the 1960s, the press had been swept off its collective feet by the charismatic all-rounder newly attired in what the Star called, a shade anachronistically, ‘the latest London togs and a Beatle pompadour’. Most of Pakistan’s matches now featured youthful, banner-waving audiences that punctuated play with lusty chants of ‘Imran! Imran!’ Twenty years later, a suitably impressed political reporter would instinctively turn to Imran in the middle of a ‘hysterically enthusiastic’ campaign rally in Lahore, and in all innocence ask him whether he had ever seen anything like it before. ‘Yes,’ he said quietly, ‘I have.’
So that autumn, when Imran chose to make one of his relatively rare appearances in Pakistani domestic cricket, he did so ‘watched by a pack roughly the size of the White House press corps’, to quote an AP reporter named Tony Gill, who was qualified to make the comparison. He repaid their interest in spectacular fashion. Playing at Lahore for PIA in the Invitation Trophy against Pakistan Railways, Imran returned figures of five for 31 in the first innings and two for 33 in the second. Appearing for the same team against National Bank, he took six for 49 and six for 56, missed the Quaid-e-Azam knockout match with the House Building Finance Corporation, but returned to bag four for 36 and three for 63 against Habib Bank, off whose attack, with Abdul Qadir to the fore, he hit a spectacularly aggressive second-innings 77. As a direct result, PIA claimed both major domestic trophies; Imran was the league’s most valuable player, his 26 wickets having come at just over 10 apiece.
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