CRICKET: Paul Martin
PAKISTAN’S speed twins say “Hello” and “How are things?” to each other these days. The fact that Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, arguably the world’s pre-eminent fast-bowling combination, have been exchanging pleasantries at all reflects a new maturity: they had been in opposite trenches during the Great Rebellion a year ago.
Wasim found 10 players, including his until-then bosom buddy Waqar, demanding his sacking as captain during a 20- hour stand-off in the Pakistan Cricket Board’s office in Lahore last January. “They didn’t like the discipline I was trying to impose on them, like turning up on time for practice and batsmen also doing some bowling in the nets,” Wasim maintains.
The players accused him of over-reliance on advice from the previous Pakistani leader Imran Khan.
Despite his enforced resignation, Wasim performed last year exactly to his previous high standards. An average of 23.43 runs for each of his 222 wickets in 53 Test matches bears witness to his military precision rather than post- traumatic stress syndrome.
“Time is the biggest healer,” explains Wasim, talking for the first time about this bitter wrangle. “I was shocked because I felt betrayed, and at first I considered giving up playing for Pakistan. But now I’m so happy we’ve patched things up, without anyone mediating, just by ourselves, and we enjoy bowling together to take wickets.”
A key role in keeping Wasim motivated has been played by his new wife Huma, a child psycholgist who graduated from London University. She had told him to strike back by bowling even better and “show them you’re still great!” Her advice, coupled with wifely pre-Test hypnosis sessions, helped rekindle Wasim’s old fire and aggression. She is only arriving in Johannesburg next week — fortunately perhaps for the South African batsmen! Beware, Zimbabweans.
His is a somewhat more gentle art than that of the volatile Waqar, but it’s still pretty terrifying, and more consistent. Tall, lithe and strong, he swings the ball both ways, with yorkers as lethal as bouncers, though only his great rival has as yet been honoured with verbal immortality: to be bowled by an inswinging yorker is referred to as being “Waqared”. While the younger Pakistani paceman has a magnificent average per Test wicket of 18.98, the elder statesman (aged only 28, mind you) has 56 more scalps, and is virtually a genuine allrounder, boasting a Test century and four fifties.
Not a great admirer of world cricket’s administrators, he objects in particular to the limitation of two bouncers per over. “They don’t say a batsman may not play the hook or pull, or that he must play at every ball, so why restrict the fast-bowler? Even a tailender simply just has to learn how to duck.”
Wasim also advocates having not one but two neutral umpires for each Test, along with neutral officials for all one-day internationals, with the added costs split between the home and touring administrations. “The standard of umpiring worldwide is not high, yet you never see them being fined for bad decisions. At least neutral umpires can’t be accused of cheating.”
He also believes they hold double standards: had a Pakistani suggested England was a place to send one’s mother-in-law to, not the vice-versa suggestion of Ian Botham, the player would, he is convinced, have been banned for years by the world’s cricket chiefs.
While Wasim acknowledges a Pakistani cricketing tendency to self-destruct, he considers it a pro-
-duct of the pressures that come from being either national heroes or instant villains. “But I thrive on the pressure to perform,” says Wasim. “That’s what I’m paid to do.”
Despite last week’s two debacles, he rates Pakistan as the world’s best, superior to the West Indians and equal to Australia in the one-day stakes. South Africa, he says, will “more than likely be right at the top in two years time. The pace bowling is very good, the fielding is the world’s best. All South Africa now lacks are a couple of really top-class batsmen, and with provincial cricket so strong here they’re sure to emerge”.
Wasim, unlike the rural Waqar, had a big-city upbringing, though much of his early cricket was played in Lahore’s backstreets while his father made a good living trading mainly in tractor spare parts. A career in business beckons after Wasim retires, probably rising high in the hierarchy of Pakistan International Airlines, who already have him on contract. He also intends to begin a family later this year. “Two’s our maximum,” he declares.
Ironically, his own bowling success at the Wanderers may ensure Salim Malik’s survival as captain. There have already been flare-ups within the Pakistani camps following the dismal defeats in the two one-dayers against South Africa.
Before he hangs up his boots Wasim makes no secret that he would relish another chance to lead his country. “I think I learned a lot during my one year at the helm,” he says, “and I would do better and better the longer they let me have it.”