Wasim out to salvage his reputation (24 Jan 1998)

24 January 1998

Wasim out to salvage his reputation

Sue Mott

WASIM AKRAM walked through the door of his little house in Altrincham last Wednesday, switched on Teletext and sat down. Suddenly. That is how he discovered he had been dropped from the Pakistan team to tour South Africa. One of the most incandescent talents ever to have graced a cricket square: first disarmed of the captaincy, and now disowned by his country. I expected a bitter man, writes Sue Mott.

Instead, he was a charmer. "I am going to fight back," he said, with a smile that reached his dark eyes and stretched the scar on his chin imposed not by a member of the Pakistan Cricket Board but by Allan Donald's bowling for Warwickshire.

Yes, but how was he going to fight back? What can one man do against a country that still accuses him of match-fixing, where his wife and baby son are under 24-hour armed guard, where his body is burned in effigy, where his home in Lahore is stoned, where his father is threatened with kidnapping, where death threats and abuse have become routine, where he dare not go out at night without a gun.

"I will go and try to see the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif," he said calmly. "He's a nice guy. He must be a very busy guy but I think he will see me. He loves his cricket. He's played with us once or twice. He's got cricket nets at his house. At least he can ask the concerned people to look into it."

Mike Atherton might gnash his teeth at the thought of a cricketer who can march into Cabinet and say: "Ah, Tony, tell Adam Hollioake he's toast, would you?" But then Athers has never had his effigy torched on the streets of Manchester by a mob baying for his blood. He probably gets letters from schoolmistresses criticising his stance. They may be captains, past and present, of Lancashire CCC but their two experiences do not quite compare.

Not on the cricket pitch either. Atherton has been stuck to with quite ferocious loyalty as captain of the England cricket team. Wasim feels abandoned. He vowed never to captain his country again after a violent reopening of public damnation following the loss to England in the one-day tournament in Sharjah last year. He told this to the Pakistan Cricket Board. OK, they said. The next thing he knows he has been dropped altogether, by the brutish anonymity of Teletext.

"Ah, I wish I know why they dropped me. I want to know why they are doing this. I have played for Pakistan for the past 12 to 13 years. I took more wickets than anyone against the West Indies recently." He did. Seventeen. "It's painful. It's a painful experience.

"When we came back from Sharjah, the papers, ex-cricketers, they all say I took money to lose the game. It's so annoying when they don't have evidence or anything. I'm not a fool. I've earnt good money, playing top cricket, I'm not going to lose my credibility for a few pennies.

"It's true we do have a huge gambling mafia in Pakistan. Over the past two years, I have had threat calls - "do this, do that" - but I was not taking them seriously. I've no idea who they're from. We can't trace them. The police don't take it seriously.

"But my father was getting serious threat calls. He's had two heart attacks. They knew our car registration numbers. I have five nieces. They knew what time they go to school. Which school they go. What car they go in. I don't pick up the phone in Pakistan. But if my father picks it up, my wife, my mother, that's what happens. After Sharjah, it got serious. Very serious. I felt all alone. I am fighting against the media, against everyone. Nobody backs me. Everyone assumes it's true I'm taking money.

"I think it's more personal than anything else. It's a vendetta."

It puts our game in perspective. In England, we have rows about women being seen in the pavilion at Lord's. In Pakistan, Wasim fears for his life. "I am scared to go out." When he does, he always carries a gun. "Did you have to take lessons to use it?" I asked. "No," he said ominously.

FOR a career that began in a confetti of superlatives, taking seven for 50 in his first-class debut at 18, removing 12 New Zealand wickets in his first two Tests and going on to form one of the most lethal strike partnerships with Waqar Younis, his sometime friend and enemy, in his world history of the game, his savage decline into this political no-man's-land is affecting him fiercely. "I have never been so down," he said.

"They're doing exactly the same with Waqar. Imagine if you are the main person in a team, and suddenly you don't know if you're being picked or not. I think the board is enjoying this." According to reports from Pakistan, Waqar, 26, is also being accused of lying about his age. "We doubt if he has told his real age," a board official was quoted as saying. "We suspect he is 30, as his bowling shows."

Wasim is not being accused of Zsa Zsa Gabor tactics, merely losing his pace and venom. It is true a shoulder injury kept him out for much of last year but when you name your new son Tahmoor Mohammad after a famous Mongolian conqueror, it is clear the fires of aggression still burn.

In some ways, they might have burned too brightly in the past. Wasim's first spell of captaincy was marred by strife and a nine-player revolt, including his partner Waqar. He was accused of being temperamental, aloof, the self-regarding protÚgÚ of Imran Khan. "I was arrogant, of course. I was very frustrated at times. I didn't know how to handle pressure. Or discipline. Waqar was vice-captain but he was late at times. He got fined but fines don't mean anything when you earn so much. So I got frustrated. I didn't get any help from my seniors, because they thought I was too young. I was 25. But nobody is a born leader. You learn by your mistakes."

For a while, the Pakistan captaincy ressembled the revolving door at Harrods during the January sales. Salim Malik had a brief stint but was removed following bribery allegations. Moin Khan, a junior player without a regular place in the side, was next for the ejector seat. Finally, following the briefest of spells by Ramiz Raja, Wasim was once again honoured with the task of leading his country. "I enjoyed this stint. Everybody did." Then came the loss to India in the quarter-finals of the World Cup, out came the petrol cans and up went his effigy and his reputation in flames.

"It seems like controversy is part of my life. It's not funny," he said.

Sometimes it was. Back in the carefree days. When he began playing for Lancashire 10 years ago, the locker-room pranksters, Mike Watkinson and Paul Allott, watched in helpless mirth as this poor, shy, young left-arm bowler from Pakistan lugged a coffin of inexplicable heaviness all the way from coach to Nottingham's changing-room. "I finally opened it and there was a block of bricks in my bag."

His greatest moment on the cricket field was beating England in the final of the 1992 World Cup when he earned the man-of-the-match award. "That was a dream come true. The feeling was amazing." Being a Muslim, he celebrated in a manner that Allan Lamb would find frankly unbelieveable. "Milk," he said.

HIS greatest rival he doesn't hesitate to name as Viv Richards. "I've bowled him out quite a few times. I used to fight with him. I swore at him once in Barbados. He said: 'I'll see you outside.' And after the game, he came outside. He was a huge guy and I was 20 years old. I said, 'Imran, he's outside. I'm not going out there!' I apologised to him later. He said, 'It's OK, man'."

That is not a sentiment - "It's OK, man" - he has heard often since. In Pakistan, he was even taken to court over his ear-ring, a diamond stud that was deemed "girlish and un-Islamic" in a trial. "And this was at a time when people were dying left, right and centre of terrorism. Nobody bothered about that. They just bothered about my ear-ring. A little ear-ring at that."

He has taken it off now, and a swathe of hair that used to flop and swing in flamboyant sympathy with his whipping left-arm action. "I became a father. I have matured." But possibly no one needs to mature to the point where their friends beg them to take bodyguards on outings. "I say: 'Why should I take bodyguards with me? I haven't done anything wrong. I'm not a criminal.' Anyway, Benazir Bhutto's brother had seven bodyguards and Kalashnikovs and he still got killed last year. I believe if you're going to die, you're going to die."

He could, practically speaking, leave Pakistan. He will spend more time in England this year anyway, captaining Lancashire, a job he has promised to relish. "No," he said, "I will not leave Pakistan. It is my country. My priority is to clear my name. I will not sit quietly."

In this, he is fortunately supported by his wife Huma, who even more fortunately is a trained psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. "She can put me to sleep for 20 minutes and I wake up feeling refreshed," he said. I say that some women I can think of might abuse this power over their husbands. "She is not Paul McKenna," he said. "It's just mentally relaxing."

So if I was a member of the Pakistan Cricket Board, I would not feel entirely confident we had heard the last of Wasim Akram. He is 28 short of Imran's record of 362 Test wickets. He would like to break it. A comeback against Australia in October would be in order. "It would be tragic if I missed it because of politics."

By complete and felicitous coincidence, Lancashire will be in South Africa on a pre-season visit while the Pakistan team are also there. What will you say if you bump into them, I wondered. His enslaving smile was undimmed. "Hi guys," he said.

Wasim Akram fact-file

Born: March 3, 1966 Lahore, Pakistan.

Left-hand batsman; fast left-arm bowler.

Pakistan 1984-85 to date; Lancashire 1988 to date; PACO 1984-1986; Lahore Whites 1985-1987; PIA 1987 to date.

County debut: 1988 v Notts. County cap: 1989. Appointed captain for 1998 season, which is also benefit year.

Test debut: 1984-85 v New Zealand.

One-day international debut: 1984-85 v New Zealand.

Captain of Pakistan: 1992-93 to 1993-94 and 1995-96 to present time.

Overseas tours: Pakistan U-23 to Sri Lanka 1984-85. Pakistan to Australia 1989-90, 1995-96; England 1987, 1992, 1996; India 1986-87; New Zealand 1984-85, 1992-93, 1993-94, 1995-96; South Africa 1992-93, 1994-95; Sri Lanka 1985-86, 1994-95; West Indies 1987-88, 1992-93.

Batting

M I NO Runs Ave HS* 100 Ct Tests 77 105 13 1971 21.42 257* 2 29 1-day int 238 186 34 2230 14.67 86 0 61 1st-class 201 274 31 5378 22.13 257* 5 68 * Not out

Bowling

Runs W Ave Best 5/10 Tests 7462 334 22.34 7-119 21/4 1-day int 7769 341 22.78 5-15 19/0 1st-class 18105 850 21.30 8-30 63/15

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)