seems to have been commendably focused on his studies at Worcester Grammar (whose fees of about £200 a term were paid not by the club, as popularly rumoured, but by Imran’s father). In the light of his future reputation as a sort of flannelled Austin Powers figure, it’s worth quoting one final schoolfriend, now a lecturer in psychology, who saw him as a socially naive young man. ‘He kept to himself, and didn’t show any interest in girls or sex that I was aware of.’ Sometime towards the end of the year, Imran apparently did write a well-received short story or essay, which he circulated to some of the senior boys, about a man who walks around London soliciting beautiful women. ‘He certainly didn’t do any fieldwork on it,’ his friend insists. Imran also spent hours retooling his bowling action both in the school gym and in the indoor net at Edgbaston which Worcestershire then shared. Although Henry Horton worked doggedly to convert the ‘catapault’ bowler into the well-oiled machine of later legend, it was John Parker, the young New Zealand batsman also in his first year at Worcester, who looked at Imran one day and casually suggested he ‘take a little jump’ before delivering the ball. The idea was both to gain extra momentum and to get more side-on to the batsman, who, as an added bonus, would then have to deal with ‘this crazy, vaulting Pakistani bowling at you at 90 miles an hour’, as one distinguished former England opener puts it. The improvisations in Imran’s bowling technique continued over the years. He could, and did, vary his run-up, steam in wide of the crease, move it both ways, or neither, and was apt to follow up a slower ball with a screaming bouncer that left batsmen wringing hands or standing transfixed. But what really set him apart was that ‘little jump’. It was at once superbly efficient and shamelessly flamboyant, and as such could be readily appreciated by players and spectators alike. At Edgbaston in 1982 Imran took seven for 52 in the English first innings, and was paid the compliment of the home crowd applauding their own team’s discomfiture as they savoured a bowling routine that was part athletics, part ballet and part tribal wardance. ‘It was,’ said the England captain, ‘a privilege to be there.’
In July 1972 Imran won a place at Keble College, Oxford, after being brusquely rejected by Cambridge. Before going up he played some schools and Warwick Pool cricket, making use of his new action; although the exact number is hard to establish, I was told he had taken ‘a minimum of 25 wickets’ in the course of four single-innings matches. (He also played once for Worcestershire Seconds against Glamorgan, with the more modest if economical figures of none for 16 off eight.) In his autobiography, Imran notes a shade tartly, ‘When I reported to the county in 1972 I found a few things entirely different from the terms we had agreed. For a start, my wages had been reduced’ — supposedly from £35 to £25 a week — ‘and secondly, John Parker was to be specially registered ahead of me.’ Imran’s account doesn’t entirely square with that of the incoming county secretary, Mike Vockins, who, while not a party to the original deal struck in the pavilion at Lahore, had ‘all the bumph’ at his disposal. ‘There would have been only limited opportunities to play [Imran] in that 1972 season, although under the rules he would have automatically become eligible and registered once he went up to Oxford. I can’t recall any occasion during my 30 years as Secretary when any players’ wages were reduced,’ says Vockins.
Even at that stage, Imran seems to have had distinctly mixed views about the appeal of playing county cricket seven days a week. As he quickly recognised, the sheer repetitiveness of it, often cited as a weakness, can be a marked asset from the player’s point of view; if you make a mistake, you get a chance to atone for it on an almost daily basis for five months. Set against that was the irksome routine of humping one’s kit up and down the British motorway system, and lodging in a series of guest-houses or hotels with little pretension to luxury. The wages were unspectacular — £800 to £1,200 per annum was typical for an uncapped player. For reasons of both background and temperament, Imran never fully integrated into the general banter of the county dressing-room or indeed of the pub. He never drank alcohol, a major handicap in almost every aspect of life as a professional sportsman in the Britain of the early 1970s. ‘We didn’t know quite what to make of him,’ one Worcestershire colleague recalls. ‘He certainly wasn’t one of the boys in the sense of going out on the pull, though I gather he did pretty well in that area by himself.’ Basil D’Oliveira, the South African-born player then in his tenth year with Worcestershire, told me, ‘I’m not surprised if there were misunderstandings, seeing most English county cricketers knew as much about Pakistan as they did about the dark side of the moon.’ Imran came to think that the ‘old pros’ on the county circuit were hopelessly negative in their approach to the game, and ‘slightly racist’ to boot. D’Oliveira confirmed that he had once heard an opposition bowler greet the new recruit ‘with a whole string of ethnic stereotypes, in which the word “chutney” somehow stood out’, and that ‘Immy’s response was to hit the second or third ball he faced from the guy out of the park.’ D’Oliveira added that it ‘wasn’t that unusual a scene’.
Imran eked out the balance of a forgettable season for Worcestershire Seconds, distinguishing himself only with a four-wicket haul against Leicestershire and their perhaps less than stellar middle order of Schepens, Stringer, Wenban and Stubbs. While on the road he roomed alone, generally ate alone, and found ways to kill time alone before and after games. In another departure from standard practice Imran spent long hours wandering through museums and art galleries, browsing in public libraries and visiting the historic sights in various provincial towns. He seems not to have bonded with any of his team-mates, or to have gone out of his way to make friends. Writing of his time at Worcestershire as a whole, Imran was to note, ‘I just didn’t enjoy myself … Either the players were married and had their own lives, or they were unmarried and spent their evenings in pubs. Being a teetotaller, I was lonely and bored.’ About the best that could be said of the experience was that it allowed him to play cricket at a marginally more competitive level than would have been the case in Pakistan, whose domestic contests between various state agencies, transportation conglomerates and banks proved of only limited appeal to players and spectators alike.
The crash course in culture served Imran well at Oxford, where he initially read Geography before switching to Politics and Economics. On the whole it seems to have been a more congenial atmosphere than that of the county Second XI circuit. One of his contemporaries told me that, at 20, Imran had been ‘a bit green’ and had stayed the course academically only through his own freelance efforts and the good grace of Paul Hayes, the senior tutor at Keble, who had evidently taken a shine to him. Imran had been ‘socially agile’, however — ‘If it was female and had a pulse, he pursued it.’ After a year living in college he moved out to a series of digs, getting around town on an ancient Bantam motorbike. It’s remembered that he liked to ride this at top speed, often preferring a zigzag pattern to a straight line, and even in winter carried his cricket bat slung over the back wheel. One Saturday night Imran rasped up on the bike to a party in Oxford’s Summertown area, accompanied by a ‘ravishing looking’ girlfriend. A certain amount of drinking and substance abuse had gone on among his fellow guests, I was told. Perhaps as a result, later in the evening a fresh-faced chemistry student reeled up to Imran and said, ‘I’m Cassius Clay and I’m going to knock the shit out of you.’ Imran, who was somewhat taller than his antagonist, put his hand on the man’s right shoulder and held him patiently at arm’s length while ‘the little guy punched the air in between them’.
Imran was particularly fortunate to play his cricket at the Parks, a handsome, tree-lined ground that was only a short walk from Keble. In the summer term his practice was to go directly from his early morning tutorial to the playing field, returning home again for a late dinner. An Oxford team-mate named Simon Porter remembers him as ‘more inherently gifted, obviously, [but] also more driven’ than his colleagues. ‘Imran spent hours trundling away in the nets, essentially in an effort to perfect his inswinger. He always wanted to know if you could “read” him, which I, for one, couldn’t — and I had the bruises all over my leg to prove it.’ It wasn’t unknown for Imran to attract a ‘small harem’ of supporters to the ground for even the most insignificant fixture. Another colleague remembers that, on losing his wicket in one inter-college game, Imran ‘strode straight through the front door of the pavilion, grabbed a bag, and strode straight out the back one, where a blonde in a sports car was waiting
