was awarded a bonus of £2. No wonder that Zaheer Abbas reports that ‘one of the first English words I learnt when I switched from Urdu was “peanuts”. Everyone in the Pakistan team told me it summed up our wages.’ In another of those administrative lapses that characterised the tour, Imran was frequently called on to share a room with Saeed Ahmed, the deposed captain who had a ‘persecution complex’, Wasim Raja believed. Following his sacking, Saeed had developed an ‘embittered disposition’, I was told, and it was ‘damn hard to be his friend’. According to the testimony of Wasim and others, he was not the ideal man to have as a mentor on your first overseas tour.
For all that, however, the real reason that Imran initially failed in England was simply that his ample self-confidence wasn’t yet matched by his abilities. His team-mate Asif Iqbal told me that ‘he had bags of determination, but only a fair amount of natural talent and, back then, hadn’t learnt many of the tricks of the trade he acquired later’. Set against this measured description is the account of the former England captain who recalls that ‘Imran bowled a lot of balls on his first tour: take that any way you want’. Another senior Pakistan player thought the 18-year-old to be at a ‘critical point in his life … I told him that he should strive to get some qualifications, in order [to] have something to fall back on if the cricket failed. Otherwise he stood a good chance to end up a mere ditch-digger in Pakistan.’ Even if Imran made it, his colleague added, he should know that ‘professional sport was filled with reprobates who gambled and drank and ran after lewd women’. The teenager couldn’t argue, and merely kept saying, ‘I know, I know …’
Imran made his first appearance of the tour on a frosty early May morning, bulked up in three sweaters to play for the Pakistanis against Northamptonshire. Before that he’d restricted himself to bowling in the nets at Lord’s, which proved to be an only partly successful introduction to English conditions. For one thing, he still had no formal run-up. He just tore in off anything up to 10 or 12 scything paces and let fly. Imran’s first delivery in England duly reared up and spat past his colleague Aftab Gul’s nose. This would have been promising, but for the fact that Gul was batting in the next-door net at the time. Imran’s second ball ricocheted off the head of a spectator. His third was reported as being a vicious beamer that struck the iron cross-bar over the net and shot perpendicularly up into the air. ‘I was bothered by the difference between the hard grounds of Pakistan and the soft, damp, English turf [and] couldn’t get a foothold,’ Imran later explained.
At Northampton he took just two wickets in the match, but partially redeemed himself by clouting 28 and 33 not out in a low-scoring game after coming in at No. 10. ‘In the power and cleanness of his hitting, Khan gave as much pleasure as anyone,’ opined that doyen of cricket correspondents, E.W. Swanton. Imran took three for 58 in his next outing, against Hampshire, failed dismally against Nottinghamshire and wasn’t selected for the tourists’ showpiece match against MCC at Lord’s. In all, he was to have a distinctly mixed first impression of what soon became his adopted home. Some of the sledging in those pre-PC times tended to be blunter than today, and there was often a muttered ‘Paki’ or ‘Curry breath’ to be heard from the fielders as Imran came out to bat. The insults seem to have had the singular motivational effect of making him work even harder at his game. As Javed Miandad recalls, ‘On [that] tour, Imran developed a strict routine of physical training that he adhered to without fail throughout his playing days … Every day, he would bowl six to eight overs without fail. He wouldn’t be bowling to any batsman, but would just be on his own, bowling at a single stump … There was a popping crease, and 22 yards away there would be the solitary stump. It was just Imran and the craft of bowling, with the rest of the world completely blocked out.’
When the tour ended and Imran joined Worcestershire, he continued to practise in an indoor school with the county coach and former slow left-armer Henry Horton. The coach thought ‘the lad bowl[ed] like a catapault’, but recognised that there was talent there to be tapped.
One of Imran’s Pakistan colleagues told me that, such were his shortcomings in England, there had even been talk of sending him home early ‘to hone his skills with Lahore’ — a fate not much better, for an ambitious young professional, than being sent down the salt mines. He probably survived as much by luck as by any sudden improvement in technique. Two of Pakistan’s faster bowlers, Sarfraz Nawaz and Salim Altaf, were ruled out by injuries, so Imran found himself called up for the first Test against England at Edgbaston. For the record, he was 18 years and 240 days old on his debut: impressive, but almost a case of late development compared to other Pakistan internationals such as Mushtaq Mohammad, who had supposedly been just over 15 when he first played for his country. Imran would remember the pre-Test dinner as being a less than inspirational affair. Several of the senior players took the opportunity to remark that the England batsmen and bowlers were the best in the world; and as for their slip fielding, if you nicked the ball, there was no point in even looking round, as the catch would already have been taken. (They were obviously still unfamiliar with Keith Fletcher.) There were raucous celebrations when the news of Imran’s selection reached Zaman Park, where Mrs Khan distributed a large tray of the enticingly-named barfi, a fudge-like confection traditionally reserved for holidays. As we’ve seen, Imran’s father’s response was generally more restrained. One English-based family friend told me that Mr Khan ‘took great pride that Imran represented his country. He never missed his press cuttings and appearances on T V. But he followed them as though Imran had a permanent starring role in a school play. I don’t think he ever fully grasped the size of the stage his son played on.’
At Edgbaston Pakistan won the toss, batted and were still there two days later. It was the Test in which Zaheer Abbas scored 274, Asif Iqbal 104 not out and Mushtaq 100, and England followed on for the first time against Pakistan. Imran’s inaugural over in Test cricket was one he never forgot. It was bowled to Colin Cowdrey, who was then winning his 109th cap. Cowdrey failed to land a bat on the first four balls, if only because they were so wide. At the end of five overs Imran’s analysis was none for 19. The figures would have been worse had the England batsmen not been content to stand back and watch the ball pass harmlessly by in the direction of long leg. In one account, the Pakistani wicket-keeper Wasim Bari was obliged to ‘fling [him]self around like Gordon Banks’. At the end of Imran’s spell his captain took him aside and gently explained that an inswinger should ideally pitch outside the off stump, not outside leg. England managed to hold out for a draw thanks to rain and an unbeaten century by Luckhurst. The former Australian captain Richie Benaud was commentating on the match and rather generously remarks that ‘No one paid a great deal of attention to the tourists’ young all-rounder. He was just one of 11 players.’ Imran himself reports that as a result of the Test ‘the reputation of our side rose, while mine sank without trace … Dreadful … I considered giv[ing] up serious cricket.’ Clearly, a star wasn’t born.
The rest of the tour can perhaps be quickly recalled. Imran was back to his old routine against Yorkshire at Bradford, using the scattergun approach to try to dismiss batsmen, if mostly favouring the leg side. He was dropped for the second and third Tests, which Pakistan drew and lost respectively. It rained almost constantly. At the end of June the tourists took the bus up to Selkirk to play Scotland, where Imran recalls that two of his colleagues ‘sat talking about me, fully aware that I could hear them. They made no attempt to hide their scorn. Their verdict was that I would be lucky to get into the Second XI of an English club side, let alone a county team.’ Imran adds that he was immediately fired up to prove his critics wrong, although with initially disappointing results: wicketless in both Scottish innings, he managed knocks of 14 and 0 with the bat. His primary challenge remained landing the ball on the cut part of the pitch. Against Surrey, Imran took off his sweater to start bowling and the umpire good-naturedly called down the wicket to the batsman, ‘Right arm over, anywhere.’ Everyone duly fell about laughing, including, to his credit, Imran. Or perhaps he had merely been gritting his teeth. In the 11 matches he played on the tour he took a total of 12 wickets at an average of 43.91 each.
Things didn’t go that well off the field, either. Imran was fined £2, equivalent to his entire tour bonus, when he left the Pakistan hotel one night after stuffing a pillow
