‘Bit of a turnaround, isn’t it?’)
When Imran began to play for Sussex, the club found him a small ground-floor flat next to the gates of the county ground in Hove. As a result he could commute to work in a minute or two, while London was only an hour away by train. Imran initially spent much of his free time with Javed, but soon reactivated his old social life. By early in his second season at Hove, he had ‘plugged himself in like an “Open” sign’, to quote one of his county colleagues. Accounts of Imran’s dating habits differ. According to his amused team-mate, ‘Immy was on the pull in London or Brighton on average four or five nights a week.’ He was allegedly vain of his appearance. The team-mate remembers Imran standing in front of the mirror grooming himself, smoothing down his thick hair, ‘adjusting the chain round his neck so it hung just so’, then happily padding off with his ‘feline lope’. According to others, Imran was actually ‘quite relaxed’ or ‘passive’ with the opposite sex, and more inclined to the role of the hunted than the hunter. The Sussex and England bowler Tony Pigott told me he had once been in a nightclub in Brighton with Imran and the county’s South African star Garth le Roux. ‘It was a mirrorball and Bee Gees sort of place; that whole thing … After a bit Le Roux and I chugged back from the dance-floor to the table where Imran was sitting alone with his glass of milk. “Come on and meet some girls,” Garth said, only to hear Imran’s superb reply, “No, thanks. If they want to meet me, they can bloody well come over here”.’
On 9 May 1977, just as Imran was settling in to life in the Yorkshire leagues, the news broke that Kerry Packer and his Australian television network had signed some two dozen of the world’s top players to appear in an exhibition round under the name of World Series Cricket. It would be hard to exaggerate the ensuing shock in certain quarters. Among several perceived villains of the piece, the press heaped special scorn on the Sussex and England captain Tony Greig, who had acted as Packer’s recruiting agent. Greig appears to have convinced most of the players involved that a compromise would be swiftly reached whereby they would still be available for Test cricket. Imran was one of 14 non-Australians initially contracted to represent a WSC World XI in Packer’s circus, as much of the cricket establishment and media came to know it. There would be particular repercussions for Pakistan, which lost five leading players, including their captain Mushtaq, to the enterprise. For his services, Imran was paid Aus $25,000, or roughly the equivalent of £10,500, for some ten weeks’ cricket. At the time he was making a hard-earned £250 per Test, £3,000 a season for Sussex and a further £70–80 a month from PIA on the rare occasions he played in Pakistan — a total income of around £4,600 from all sources.
Although Abdul Kardar had eventually resigned as chairman of the Pakistan board after the feud about match fees, his successor Mohammad Hussain took a similarly hard line when confronted with the latest demonstration of player power. The dispute that broke out in May 1977 soon threatened to make that earlier row look like a ‘little local difficulty’ by comparison. In short order, Hussain announced that the five Pakistanis who had signed for Packer would be ‘ostracised’ from Test cricket, adding that they were ‘unpatriotic … mercenaries [of] the worst stripe’. The board went on to assure the Pakistani public that there were ‘ample quality reserves’ available to cover for the defectors — a self-confidence not entirely borne out by events, in particular the 1978 Pakistan tour of England, which was a rout.
At 9.30 in the morning of 30 July 1977, Donald Carr of the TCCB sent a telex to the secretary of Sussex confirming that ‘Imran Khan, the subject of our recent discussions’ was now free to play for the county. Two hours later, the subject in question was in action in a championship match against Gloucestershire at the College Ground in Cheltenham. He took two for 52 in the first Gloucester innings and one for 15 in the second; a respectable if not electrifying debut. Opponents, press and public were soon struck by the raw pace of the now visibly stronger, broad-chested bowler — he again took the opportunity to pepper Mike Procter with bouncers — but also by his versatility. His elegance, power and stamina (he could, and often did bowl unchanged all morning) were noted. Nevertheless, some reservations were expressed. Imran was lucky, it was agreed, to play much of his English cricket on the seamer’s paradise at Hove. Would the ‘languid-looking playboy’, as The Times called him, ‘succeed on slower wickets [or] when a really top-class batsman — Barry Richards, for example — [got] after him?’ One expert who didn’t hedge his bets was Geoff Boycott, who told me that ‘Sussex was the making of Imran. He’d had the talent but now he also had the brain and the spirit. A great competitor. Like me, he’s a dragon in Chinese astrology.’
In the event, Imran, or ‘Immy’ as, much to his distaste, he continued to be almost universally known, mocked the doubters. He took four for 66 and hit a rapid 59 (a third of his side’s total) against Glamorgan at Eastbourne. There were a further seven wickets in the win over Yorkshire at Hove, and commendably thrifty figures of 16–5–26–0 against a run-chasing Nottingham side, including Clive Rice, at Trent Bridge. Imran’s batting and bowling averages were good enough, but they failed to tell the full story: the way his best attacking shots appeared to be both fast yet totally unhurried, for instance, or how, in that curious way it has when struck by a great timer, the ball always seemed to gather pace on its way to the rope. And until statistics can indicate such factors as pride and the love of a fight they won’t adequately convey the mettle of such bowling performances as the one Imran gave in the county match against Hampshire at Hove. As mentioned, the Hove wicket often inclined to extravagant morning life, but it takes more than a helpful pitch to account for first-innings figures of five for 51 against arguably the county championship’s strongest batting line-up. Among Imran’s victims: Barry Richards.
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