(not her name at the time), thought Imran a ‘physically beautiful’ man whose charm was nonetheless limited in its scope. One evening the two of them went off together to ‘a little flat above a fruit and veg shop’ in the Oxford suburbs. Looking back on the episode years later, Wishart was left to conclude that Imran was a ‘music and roses at night, pat on the bum in the morning’ type. It would be only fair to add that another woman found him an ‘attentive, funny and charming’ partner, who nonetheless struck her as the kind who would ‘hug you politely and then just stroll away once you broke up’. The words proved prophetic.
One of Imran’s earliest appearances for Oxford was against Worcestershire, where he clearly had something to prove. Over the years, some of these county versus university encounters could be the ultimate in boredom, and many of the old pros saw them as little more than an agreeable way to improve their averages. That wasn’t to be the case here, at least in Oxford’s second innings. A powerful Worcester attack of Holder, Pridgeon, D’Oliveira and Gifford appeared to be sending down half-volleys and long hops all afternoon. It wasn’t so, but Imran’s polished innings of 54 more than had the measure of the professionals’ line-up. He followed it by scoring 47 and 51 against Sussex, a match I illicitly cycled over from my nearby boarding school to watch. Nothing seemed to better crystallise events than the straight six with which Imran greeted Sussex’s highly regarded off-spinner Johnny Barclay; 2–0–4–2–6 followed, all in the direction of the River Cherwell. After the over, Barclay took his sweater and came back to field at third man, still muttering to himself. Something similar happened a fortnight later against Gloucestershire. Imran scored 59 out of 106 in the Oxford second innings, peppering the old wooden scorebox-cum-groundsman’s hut with sixes. Others landed in the copse of trees behind square leg. Generally speaking Imran did rather less with the ball, but was still in a class of his own compared with his fellow undergraduates, a tall poppy among shrinking violets.
It was the same story against Cambridge in the varsity match. Imran top-scored with 51 in the Oxford first innings (caught off the bowling of Phil Edmonds), but took only a modest three wickets throughout. One or two of his Oxford colleagues wanted him to bowl faster, of which he was fully capable, rather than to concentrate on line and length as Worcestershire always insisted. Both Imran and his new bowling action were still works in progress. Although tall, he wasn’t as well upholstered as he would be when he filled out two or three years later, and the ‘little jump’ was a formidable physical feat that wasn’t yet invariably effective when it came to getting the ball on the wicket. In those days, the former England captain Ted Dexter told me, ‘Imran used to come charging in [and] plant his left foot virtually parallel to the batting crease in the delivery stride. “Sooner or later, that young man will do himself an injury”,’ Dexter thought presciently. Oxford drew their match with Cambridge. A night or two later, Imran walked into the White Horse in Oxford’s Broad Street, where he became one of the first men to successfully order a glass of milk in a British pub. As usual there was a small group of acolytes at his table, including the statutory blonde girlfriend. ‘People were fawning on Imran because he was already a bit of a superstar,’ one of the party recalls. ‘But the English have always been fascinated with swarthy oriental mavericks. Or at least they were in those days. Imran would have turned heads even if he’d never picked up a cricket ball. I have a fond memory of him sitting there with his milk and his blonde, trying desperately to look unimpressed while somebody read out all the glowing references to him — how he was a tiger and a fighter and so on — in the morning press. He loved it. Who wouldn’t have?’ Imran may not have been the finished article, but good judges had begun to take serious note of him.
Fighting was what life was about. That was the reason Imran ‘worked like a cur’, to quote a Keble source, to support himself at Oxford. When he was later to claim that ‘playboys have plenty of time and money — I’ve never had either’, he didn’t exaggerate his case. In the wake of the civil war and the subsequent currency crisis, the Pakistani government had imposed strict exchange controls that made it illegal to send more than the equivalent of £15 out of the country annually, with the prospect of a lengthy gaol term for anyone breaking the law. As a result Imran had no trust fund and an only minimal allowance. To keep himself afloat in the off-season he took a series of menial jobs, including one washing dishes over the Christmas holiday at Littlewoods store in south London. It was no worse than the fate of thousands of other students over the years, but it does refute the idea that he swanned through his time at Oxford like one of the teddybear-carrying toffs in Brideshead Revisited.
Despite his claim to have been neglected by Worcestershire, Imran played for the county in 11 first-class matches in the second half of the 1973 season. The club found him new if rather basic digs in the town’s Bromyard Road, and even went to war with the Test and County Cricket Board to keep him registered with them under the board’s Rule 4, relating to ‘temporary special players’. Imran came into the team in time to play Warwickshire in a fixture starting on 14 July, just three days after appearing for Oxford at Lord’s. The more free-spirited, if not always effective, student approach to the game gave way to the trench warfare of the county championship, conducted behind the sandbag of broad pads — the main idea being for batsmen to obtain a reasonably good average each season at the minimum of risk and physical exertion to themselves. For a cricketer who abhorred the safety-first school epitomised by certain old pros, it was all mildly depressing. Imran took just 31 wickets in the 11 matches (one of them, admittedly, when he bowled Garry Sobers) at some 24 apiece. But even that modest achievement eclipsed his performance with the bat — 15 innings, 228 runs, average 16.28. Being Imran, though, what he lacked in mature ability he fully made up for in self-belief; the fact that he neither scored runs nor took wickets troubled him as little as did most of the criticism he received over the years, and had the same general effect. ‘It taught me never to stop, that when you lose you fight harder the next time.’
Back in Oxford, Karen Wishart sometimes talked to Imran about his future — Imran apparently uncertain, Wishart positive that he would play cricket for only a year or two more and then go back to a steady job in Pakistan. Both the civil service and engineering were mentioned. Wishart often urged Imran to ignore the temptation to become a fully professional sportsman who presumably might just about eke out a living for another ten years or so while his contemporaries got on with their ‘proper’ careers. Down that road, she insisted, there was nothing to gain and everything to lose. Imran frequently said he didn’t much like the idea either.
If Wishart took that for an answer, she knew less than she thought she did about a man who was born to perform.
* At which point Newsweek’s editor apologised, remarking that his story had been based on an anonymous source who now ‘wasn’t sure whether it was true or not’.
* Opening the bowling with Imran for the school’s First XI was a Kenyan-born 18-year-old named Rabi Mehta, who in the 1980s went on to author several scholarly articles about the aerodynamics of a cricket ball in flight, and thus to ‘explain’ the theory of reverse swing.
In 1974 Imran was elected captain of Oxford. It was a somewhat surprising choice, considering his only mixed form with bat and ball, untried diplomatic skills and still limited command of English. According to those with whom he discussed the club’s offer, he hesitated a day or two before agreeing, apparently concerned that ‘the guys’ might not accept him. There was also the question of whether the added responsibility would affect his own game, as has been known with cricket captains. Trying to bat, bowl, lead from the front and learn the language, one friend said bluntly, was at least one job too many.
The offer was nonetheless a heady one for a 21-year-old Pakistani who had a somewhat romantic view of the British university tradition
