For years Imran Khan was a cricketing schizophrenic, with a fast bowler’s mind trapped in a medium pacer’s body. It took him nearly a decade to sort himself out. In that period many fast bowlers finish their carriers. Spinners take time to mature; fast bowlers by the very nature of their calling tend to be like meteors, flashing into and out of view.

As Imran looked back over a career spread over half his life this was on his thirty seventh birthdays and he had been playing test cricket since nineteen there were just two regrets. “I did not bowl enough at my peak” he said, pushing a hand through the hair carefully styled to look careless. Adjustment problems and injury kept him out of many matches. In fact, Imran never played more than fourteen tests in a row (which, incidentally places in perspective Kapil Dev’s one hundred plus with a break of just one, owing to a Selectorial whim).

Imran who was good enough as an undergraduate to score two hundreds in the same first class match, also felt that he might have made another couple of thousand. Runs more by this time, but “I would be so exhausted after bowling about sixty overs in three days, for instance, that the thought of batting for a big score never entered my mind. Also, we always had a top class line up and my opportunities were limited when I was young.” Imran today looks the most classically correct of batsmen on either side. He is the only one to shuffle back and across to the bowlers. His century at Karachi was proof that among the four great all-rounders of the day, he and Kapil are the only ones who would find a place in a team either purely for batting or purely for bowling. Botham tends towards bats man ship and Hadless towards bowling.

Imran considered himself the complete bowler only in 1982-83. That was the season he was every Indian batsman’s nightmare with forty wickets in one series. But that Imran is gone. He holds no terrors now. Imran was bowling from memory. But what a memory! It began in 1971 at Edgbaston where with his awkward action and attempted in-swingers that lacked control. Imran hardly looked the bowler he was to become. “I was not a wicket taker, I had the temperament of a fast bowler, but nothing else, and my action took a lot out of me. I tried many things. I bowled open chested. I ran up, stopped and bowled.

“Then I developed the leap before the delivery. It helped me get side on. It helped my rhythm. I realized that I was not the kind of bowler who could bowl in a sprint (like Malcolm Marshal, Wasim Akram).

“In the third phase, I finally became a wicket taking bowler. In one year, I played thirteen tests and took eighty eight wickets. But when I should have been playing a lot, I had only seven matches in about two and a half years, four of them in Pakistan on dead wickets. “By then I had perfected the leg-cutter. With my action, the outs-winger was out of the question.”

There is about Imran an honesty born out of confidence. If there was one crucial difference between him and his famous contemporary from across the border, it was contained in this statement: “I leveled off years ago. I knew that I was a rhythm bowler, and when things were going well, I didn’t need to work on too many things. So I didn’t experiment on any particular type of delivery. Every bowler has one special ball unique to him. Mine was the one coming into the batsman. I could control that. That was all I needed.” Compare that with Kapil Dev’s statement at the end of his one hundredth test match when he said that he had learnt how to use the old ball from Manoj Prabhakar, greenhorn of ‘just three test matches.

As fast bowlers get older, they tend to lose the ability to bowl the genuine out-swinger. This calls for a re-adjustment in their technique. The inability is caused by physical factors. The arm is not as high, the back tends to arch as extra effort is put into bowling, and even the lead shoulder tends to drop. But an essentially in swinging bowler, like Imran has had no such problems.

The oldest player in test cricket today has a pet theme Asian cricket. “We have the talent but we don’t know how to nurture it, we play at the wrong time of the year on the wrong kind of wickets. We need to prepare wickets not to find bowler, but to develop them. If Pakistan is able to find only bowlers today, rather than batsmen, it is because batsmen need some time to get into stride. Our bowlers come straight from the under 19 level

“India has a system we have no such thing. There is nepotism, the wrong people are on the committees, and idea of playing the major tournaments from your office team has led to all sorts of horse trading. Wickets are overplayed on. We need to get into regional tournaments.”

What is Mr. Imran Khan going to do about all this? Enter the gray as an administrator after his playing days? Attempt to become the minister for sport in a country where political clout is stronger than anything else?

The answer was a bit surprising.

“I will turn journalist,” said the man whose face adorns everything from magazine covers to hoardings over barber shops here. “Isn’t there anyway of checking the rate at which international cricket especially one day cricket is played the world over?” “I would like that but you see, a batsman would probably like to play more than a bowler, so how do you get a consensus? “Well, you could form a committee with the senior players of the entire cricket playing countries on it. Perhaps you could work out an understanding with the International Cricket Conference.”

There was silence while Imran thought it over. In the background. Mohammad Rafi said the theme from a Hindi film. The other players in the dressing room were too busy with their own thing. Imran’s masseur went on with his job. At last the Khan spoke. “I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe it will work. But who will organize everything?”

I left him having planted the seeds of alternative employment in his mind. The sooner the Imran Khan’s take to the other side of the game. The better it will be for the game. It has happened in tennis. Cricket cannot afford to lag behind.

Article extracted from this publication >> January 12, 1990