Wasim, the great survivor

Wasim Akram is in the twilight of his career, but even at a ripe 37 there is still a lot of fight in the old warhorse.

His legend is the stuff of a Bollywood script.

Ball tampering, match fixings and broken friendships mark his illustrious career. But Wasim has survived them all, and is still grinning and smirking at the end of his career. He will retire on his own terms, not those laid down by others.

Despite 16 long seasons filled with intrigue, the left-arm paceman can still rival any bowler’s reverse swing and he still delivers many an unplayable ball.

Now Wasim is ready to make one last stand in the World Cup.

‘I have gone through many trials and tribulations and now wish to win the Cup for Pakistan to have a memorable swansong in the game I love,” he said in a recent interview.

He made his one-day debut in November 1984 against New Zealand in Faisalabad. Though he failed to take a wicket in that game, he compensated by taking five wickets in the next game.

He played in his first World Cup in 1987, but only in 1992 did he taste success, in Australia. Wasim was part of Imran Kahn’s triumphant team in that tournament, an event that Wasim rates as the most memorable time in his career.

His all-round abilities went a long way to help Pakistan win the tournament. He bagged 18 wickets, including three in the final against England. He also made a quickfire 33 off 19 balls.

Wasim says his worst time was as captain of the 1996 World Cup quarterfinals, which were played on the subcontinent. Pakistan played archrivals India in an important game for the besieged Pakistani fans. Wasim had to pull out of the match because of a shoulder injury.

The decision angered the fans. When Pakistan lost the games the public went berserk. They accused Wasim of match-fixing and angry fans pelted his house in Lahore with stones.

The loss to Australia in England in 1999 was also a huge disappointment, because the team had come so close. Wasim, who captained the side, had thought his quest to equal Imran Kahn’s feat in 1992 would become a reality.

‘We had a very young team, but reached the final and I would never have any regrets about losing that final to Australia,” Akram said.

South Africa will be his fifth and last tournament because he has already announced his intention to retire after the World Cup.

Wasim has seen it all. He is the only bowler to have taken more than 400 wickets in both forms of the game and he is also the only player to record two hat-tricks in Tests and one-dayers.

The story of Wasim Akram runs alongside that of Waqar Younis, though Waqar started his career five years after Wasim. Their fortunes – and those of the entire Pakistani team – seem entwined in a tale of friendship, backstabbing and revolts.

Wasim and Waqar formed one of the most feared new-ball partnerships in the game, a role in which they developed their great friendship. Together they perfected the art of reverse swing.

Both learned their approach to the game from Imran Kahn, who never allowed them to compromise by bowling negatively or defensively. He became their mentor and to this day both still talk about the influence he had on their careers.

Many of the game’s great pacemen, including Allan Donald, say that the pair were the masters they copied.

‘I’d marvelled at the way Wasim and Waqar had outclassed batsmen for so long with reverse swing and I wanted to add that to my bowling. Wasim’s got such a fast arm that the ball is on you before you can react. He’s the greatest reverse swing bowler I’ve ever seen,” Donald wrote in his autobiography.

But not everyone thought that Waqar and Wasim’s reverse swing was legitimate. In 1992 the two were accused of ball tampering to extract reverse swing in an English tour.

Ian Botham was one of their harshest critics at that time and even later in his biography he accused them of tampering with the ball.

‘They’d wait for the ball to get smacked into the boundary boards a couple of times so that the leather starts to crack. Then they work thumb and fingernails around the cracks and basically rough it up while keeping one side as shiny as possible. There were a number of times when I saw them clearly fiddling with the ball,” Botham said.

Both Wasim and Waqar retaliated by saying that Botham was no angel either and that he projected his own demons on them.

Botham was not the only player to question the pair’s true talent and the allegations have left questions about whether their performance was indeed the real thing.

Wasim started his career as captain in the West Indies town in the 1993/ 1994 season. But this marked the beginning of the end of his partnership with Waqar. Wasim felt betrayed after Waqar led a player revolt after the West Indies tour that ousted him from his captaincy.

He returned to lead the national side after his successor, Salim Malik, was sacked in the wake of betting charges before the 1996 World Cup.

Wasim has not been immune to match-fixing scandals. Rumours have been floating in the cricketing world since 1994 that he is less than squeaky clean.

In May 2000 after an inquiry by a former judge from September 1998 and October 1999 he was fined 600 000 rupees, censured and barred from captaining Pakistan again. This was the third time he had lost the captaincy and he maintains the decision was just a ploy to get him fired.

Pakistan won 60% of their games with him as skipper. Waqar was named as captain in his place.

Wasim’s name was mentioned again in the match-fixing scandal in 2001 that led to the downfall of Hansie Cronje.

He was allowed to participate in the tour of England that year, but it was plagued with the animosity between himself and the new skipper. Their relationship has never been mended since the player revolt in the West Indies in 1994. Waqar accuses Wasim of damaging his career after Wasim was reinstated as captain.

During the Cricket World Cup in 1999 Waqar repeatedly accused Wasim of denying him playing opportunities. Waqar only played in the doomed Bangladesh game during that World Cup.

‘He is a great cricketer and I respect him as a cricketer, but I cannot call him a great human being. If he has a grudge against me, the best place to settle that is inside a room and not at the ground,” Waqar said at the time.

After the match-fixing scandal in 2001 Waqar mounted a behind-the-scenes campaign to have Wasim excluded from the Pakistani squad for the two-Test series against England.

The two former friends have not spoken to each other for most of the past two years, though it seems they have made a reluctant peace in recent times.

Wasim has also frequently clashed with administrators and in recent years has refused to follow what he considers to be dictatorial instructions.

In 2001 team manager Faqir Aizazuddin accused Wasim of feigning injury to escape the disastrous tour in New Zealand. The manager said Wasim’s attitude was unacceptable.

Wasim has also had to fight another battle since 1997 when he was diagnosed with diabetes. He has had to change his lifestyle and adapt to using injections and eating properly.