Pakistan won the Test at Karachi, where Imran scored a five-hour 73 not out. As even his critics allowed, it showed maturity to deny the attacking principles on which his game had been founded for 20 years by refusing to be tempted by the short ball, of which there was an ample supply. To all intents and purposes, Imran was now playing exclusively as a batsman. At Faisalabad, a seamer’s Test where the highest team score was 195, he not only didn’t take a wicket, he didn’t put himself on to bowl. The West Indies won there, setting up the decider at Lahore. Imran chose to open the attack again on his home turf, removing both Greenidge and Haynes in his first five overs. There was to be a less distinguished moment in the West Indies second innings when Wasim Akram took four wickets in five balls, but was denied a hat-trick when Malcolm Marshall dollied up a catch to mid on, where Imran dropped it. ‘I don’t think the skipper was concentrating fully,’ Wasim remarked diplomatically. Pakistan were left notionally chasing 346, a tall order against the likes of Marshall, Ambrose and Walsh on an under-prepared pitch. Imran came in with the score at 110 for four, with some five hours to play. Like his batting partners Anwar and Wasim, he kept his nerve under heavy fire, and a particularly generous quota of what was described as ‘various beamers, toe-crushers [and] chin balls’. At stumps Imran was undefeated on 58. The series was drawn. If the tourists had had marginally the better of the last two Tests, Imran enjoyed the satisfaction of not losing a rubber to the only other side in serious contention for the title of the world’s strongest cricket team.
Nine days later, Pakistan were back in the United Arab Emirates to contest the 45-over Sharjah Trophy with Sri Lanka. In a curious arrangement, this so-called ‘world knockout bout’ was staged over two legs, with each team duly winning once. It was the sort of commitment-phobic cup final only cricket can produce. There was one at least mild note of interest when, in the course of the second tie, Imran exchanged words with the Indian-based umpire P.D. Reporter. There seems to have been some difference of opinion over the regulations governing the calling of wides in one-day competition. This eventually became a muted replay of the Gatting-Shakoor Rana incident, with the two men locked in a toe-to-toe, finger-wagging debate before Reporter set off for the pavilion in protest. Calmer heads persuaded him to return, and play, such as it was, continued.
Imran restricted himself to one day’s competitive cricket over the next 12 months. He missed little of note, since Pakistan’s international schedule consisted of only a few spurious limited-over and/or exhibition games, but his absence was still enough to revive the old gibes in certain quarters of the Karachi press about his being ‘more elusive than Godot’ (among less elevated descriptions) when it came to appearing in the likes of the domestic Quaid-e-Azam trophy. Nevertheless, Imran’s unflagging energy, his willingness to spend nearly half his time in planes, his skills as a man-manager and negotiator, his knowledge of the world, his high-octane friends, and his personal flair all combined to make him more than just another over-the-hill, ‘resting’ sportsman. For most of 1991 he devoted himself to three specific areas where he tried to be as bold and innovative as he was on the cricket field, if with mixed success.
First and foremost was his hospital. More than two years after he publicly committed himself to it, the project was in some disarray. There were positive developments, certainly, including the government’s initial grant of land and the symbolic laying of the building’s foundation stone by the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, in April 1991. A firm plan now existed to convert the architect’s drawing into a sprawling, five-storey complex which could eventually cope with up to 6,000 admissions and 120,000 out-patients annually, the indigent among whom — some 70 per cent — would be treated without charge, and who would have access to state-of-the art diagnostics and operating theatres, presided over by 40 full-time surgeons and a number of visiting specialists housed in guest chalets on the grounds. Although still relatively modest compared with the better-endowed of the West’s cancer facilities, for instance New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering with its 9,000 employees, this was a radical departure from Pakistan’s notoriously archaic public healthcare system. The fundraising drive continued apace: Imran threw himself into a round of charity dinners, auctions and floodlit, celebrity cricket matches typically involving the likes of Roger Waters and Sting. A sympathetic New York businessman subscribed $60,000. In a whirlwind, 36-hour tour of Bahrain Imran raised a further $175,000. A number of smaller individual contributions came in from ordinary Pakistanis, including a desperately frail old man who bicycled to the building site in order to donate five rupees, and a group of Lahore schoolchildren who made a gift of their milk money. Hospital trustees were in place in Britain, the USA and Australia, and the whole project looked to be on track to open its doors in the early part of 1994.
On the debit side, there were unsourced but persistent rumours that certain of the hospital’s administrators were so-called ‘10 percenters’ — those who, for 10 per cent commission, used their supposed influence to secure contracts for various favoured suppliers.* As mentioned, the trustees were also regularly being inundated by charlatans or outright con artists passing themselves off as benefactors. ‘Crooks were coming out of the woodwork and saying, “I had a relation die from cancer and I’ll help you”,’ Imran’s cousin Dr Burki recalled. One or two churlish commentators remarked that it was debatable whether a single, 115-bed facility would be of any significant help for the estimated 275,000 Pakistanis diagnosed with cancer each year, and that the funds might have been better spent on a network of regional clinics. Imran took additional flak for his alleged ego trip in naming the hospital after his mother, a ‘crass indulgence’ that particularly irked the perhaps not unbiased Karachi Herald. There was more in a similar vein. A sportsman of formidable gifts, powerful intellect and great passions was, perhaps, only now coming to grasp what it was like to deal with the more opinionated of the nation’s political commentators. In a generally negative review of the scheme as a whole, the Herald complained that neither Imran nor his ‘well paid’ staff ‘appear[ed] to be the slightest bit interested in any meaningful attempt [to] help stamp out cancer in the first place’. It was left to Dr Burki to reply that public information campaigning of that sort was traditionally best left to the government. ‘Our job is treatment,’ he noted.
Of course, the hospital project was only the most visible sign that Imran’s priorities had altered somewhat in his thirties. ‘The mind must be open, unperturbed, empty of physical things,’ he’d reportedly noted of late, in something of a progression on his previous policy. Most of us, in his view, would pass through life without seriously challenging our own handed-down truths, or questioning the bigger picture. Imran’s friend and sometime banker Naeem-ul-Haque believes ‘he underwent a really profound change towards the end of his cricket career, in fact almost a rebirth. When Imran was fundraising for the hospital he came up against the true scale of the really massive public corruption in Pakistan for the first time. I remember him saying that the problem was too big for a few well-meaning social reformers to tackle. It would take an unusually dedicated national politician to clean it up.’ Pending that, Imran continued to work on behalf of a variety of children’s and environmental causes. Of his religious convictions, a matter he knew to be of some interest domestically, he said that, while it had been impractical for him to pray towards Mecca five times daily when playing cricket, of late he’d found enlightenment both in the Koran and in Muslim scholars like Charles le Gai Eaton and Ali Shariati. Among other things, they had taught him that God’s will was paramount. ‘My own inability to control my future has made me realise there is another power,’ he remarked. Speaking of his hospital fund, Imran added, ‘In Islam, the hoarding of wealth is the biggest sin. The moment you identify your needs, you can give the rest of your capital away … This is a transitory place and we redeem ourselves in the way we deal with other human beings.’ At times, when speaking of the corrupting influence of money or his preference for
trekking around the world with his possessions in a single, small suitcase, he sounded more like a holy man than an intensely competitive professional athlete.
Along with the hospital and the other worthy causes, Imran was also able to maintain his social life. By the early 1990s he had become a semi-regular guest at the London-based Kitkat Club, a combined debating society and dinner group organised by Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the posthumously disgraced financier Robert Maxwell. Imran’s soft spot for pretty women appears to have survived his deepening adherence to the Islamic faith. In the summer of 1987, when Pakistan were touring England, he had met and befriended a flaxen-haired, 26-year-old socialite named Sita White, an eventual heiress of the multi-millionaire Lord White of Hull, co-founder of the Hanson Group and one of the most prolific corporate raiders of even the Thatcher era. The relationship had apparently cooled around early 1989, by which time Susannah Constantine was on the scene. But the couple had met again for what White called a ‘last night of love’ in Hollywood on 2 October 1991, when Imran had found himself on a west coast fundraising tour prior to taking part in a one-day competition in Sharjah.
‘Ms White got pregnant,’ her ubiquitous California attorney Gloria Allred later informed a judge, ‘and Imran told her he hoped it was a boy. When it was learnt it would be a girl, he expressed disappointment and said the child would not be able to play cricket’ — a vile calumny, obviously, as he would have known that the women’s game goes from strength to strength — ‘where he has some renown.’ According to Ms Allred, Imran had urged his ‘distraught’ lover to have an abortion, but she refused. He would later vigorously contest this part of the story. In any event, Tyrian Jade White was born on 15 June 1992, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Five years later, California Superior Court Commisioner Anthony Jones ruled that Imran was the child’s legal father. He added that it was a default judgment, since ‘neither Mr Khan nor his attorneys have deigned to appear here’. ‘We did not request child support today,’ added a tremulous Ms Allred, whose thirst for justice seemed to be matched by an equally well developed flair for the dramatic. ‘But we hope that one day he will open up his heart to his beautiful young daughter and give her the love, respect and nurturing every little girl deserves.’
A few years later, Imran would apparently decide to take an at least limited role in Tyrian’s upbringing, though his own availability would turn out to be at the mercy of more global events.
A year after participating in the ‘world knockout bout’ against Sri Lanka, Imran was back in Sharjah to play in a three-nation, 50-over, $60,000 tournament sponsored by the usual tobacco giant. Pakistan promptly lost two of their four opening matches but, thanks to the event’s Kafkaesque rules, survived to beat India in the final. There were to be shades of their Sharjah performance four months later in Australia.
Between accepting donations and lifting awards, Imran was becoming a proficient speechmaker. As a rule he went over every line, worked ‘painstakingly’ on getting the right tone and aimed, above all, for simplicity. His various press conferences showed a similar disdain for convoluted structure and high-blown phrases, if not for occasional displays of irascibility and defensiveness. When asked to comment on the new one-bouncer-per-over rule, Imran called it ‘without doubt one of the most brainless pieces of legislation ever passed by the International Cricket Council.’
From Sharjah, Imran flew back to Lahore to lead Pakistan in a home series against Sri Lanka, the last stop on a grand farewell journey en route to the 1992 World Cup in Australia. The visit wasn’t without administrative controversy. The BCCP appointed home-born officials, Shakoor Rana included, in all three Tests, thus ensuring that the Sri Lankans left thoroughly incensed at what they perceived to be biased umpiring. Meanwhile, the ICC-installed referee was none other than Donald Carr, an administrator of unimpeachable probity, but, to some, forever tainted as the man who had allegedly debagged Idrees Beg 36 years earlier. So the Pakistanis, in turn, had cause to feel aggrieved. Imran then managed to fall out with Javed Miandad when he made the provocative suggestion that the latter change his position in the batting order. According to Javed, ‘In the first Test he sent me in at No. 5. I wasn’t happy about this. I had been a career No. 4 batsman and made clear to the captain I had no intention of batting at any other spot. But Imran, never an easy man to dissuade, insisted I be tried at No. 3 or No. 5 or No. 6.’ These negotiations were still taking place right through the Pakistanis’ World Cup training camp, and indeed during the tournament itself.
Imran’s men, even so, achieved their stated aim of a series win against Sri Lanka, a side which, if not exactly among the titans of world cricket, had acquitted themselves with credit on recent tours of both England and Australia. The generally sparse crowds were rewarded by some watchable batting and one or two genuinely inspired bursts of captaincy. Any romantic souls who believed that the game was still about swashbuckling ‘amateurs’ who put the needs of the team ahead of their own individual interests would have found plenty to applaud in the first Test, at Sialkot. Sri Lanka batted first and scored an about par 270. Light rain then fell at the start of the Pakistan reply, which became a three-day marathon of prolonged umpires’ inspections and sardonic catcalls from the crowd. By the fourth afternoon the score stood at 423 for five, with the captain on 93 not out. Concluding that a lead of 153 was good enough and that his bowlers needed match practice, Imran declared the innings closed just short of what would have been his seventh Test century. It was a self-denying gesture of the sort that one somehow can’t imagine coming quite as readily from, say, Javed, had he been in the same position. In the event the Sri Lankans held out, but even the Karachi Herald allowed that Imran’s leadership showed ‘class and imagination’ and had been the ‘best part [of] an otherwise soggy draw’.
Pakistan eventually took the series 1–0. Imran allowed himself just nine overs in the three matches, without taking a wicket. If his bowling was now ‘little more than a joke’, as one report insisted, at least it was still a practical joke, as figures of three for 15 off eight overs in the one-day international at Hyderabad illustrated. Meanwhile, his batting average was 57.50. Imran played his 88th and, as it turned out, last Test from 2 to 7 January 1992 at the Iqbal Stadium, Faisalabad. Having made his international debut more than 20 years earlier, when cricket was still known fondly as the ‘gentleman’s game’, he’d survived to see a time of lost certainties and frenetic, floodlit slogs played between teams clad in fluorescent tracksuits. The arc of his career spanned more change in the sport than had been seen in any previous period of its history. Born only five years after Pakistan came into being and vividly aware of the country’s colonial heritage, he’d eventually led the national team not only to victory over England, but to become arguably the best, and certainly the most bellicose, side in the world, despite the internecine rows. The responsibilities he bore were like those of no other Pakistan captain before him, and he more than met the test. Imran even went out on a high, with a win at Faisalabad, even if his own last innings wasn’t his most distinguished: lbw, b. Wijegunawardene, 0.
The Pakistanis’ build-up to the fifth World Cup, jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand, had a degree of self-satisfied masochism to it that was quite pronounced even by their standards. As per tradition, there were a number of heated meetings of the BCCP’s selection committee. One, which the team captain didn’t attend, was held in a split-level room at the Gaddafi Stadium which was reportedly so crowded that ‘some voting members had to squeeze on to a narrow upper gallery’, from which they intervened in the debate below ‘like gargoyles hissing down’. In a subsequent session, Imran was to argue persuasively for the inclusion of the cherubic and dapper Mushtaq Ahmed in the squad of 14, despite his not having appeared in the Sri Lanka series, and being only partially secure in the United Bank side. Mushtaq’s services were to be much in demand over the coming weeks. Pakistan’s most successful strike bowler of the previous two years, Waqar Yo
unis, had to fly home before the first match of the competition because of a stress fracture, and both his stand-in Ata-ur-Rehman (later banned by the ICC for his alleged involvement in a match-fixing ring) and the opener Saeed Anwar fell unfit. In their absence, the selectors chose a 21-year-old Multan batsman named Inzamam-ul-Haq, a self-proclaimed ‘visual cricketer’ who came to combine some of the flowing style of Majid with the imposing bulk of Colin Milburn, and one or two other finds of less consequence. For its part, the press was broadly divided between those who thought the Pakistanis would win easily and others who believed them to be the worst group of professional sportsmen ever to leave home shores. If so, they weren’t the worst prepared: Imran was able to persuade the board to send the whole party to Australia a month before the start, so as to ‘bond and acclimitise’, he told me. Even then, something of the Pakistanis’ uniquely chaotic travel arrangements and fragile communications skills remained. Javed Miandad had strained his back during a practice match at the team’s training camp and wasn’t initially named in the touring party. The Star was not alone in believing that the ‘talented and spunky’ batsman had finally reached the end of his long career, and the Karachi AP wrote a speculative obituary to that effect. Such observers underestimated Javed’s obstinacy and resilience, as the BCCP’s Arif Abassi recalls.
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