Martin Johnson column – Squabbles, insults, threats… Oh yes, it’s Pakistan!

England and Pakistan will not be playing for anything tangible this summer, like the Ashes, but given that their cricketing history has occasionally teetered on the edge of what a divorce court would call an irretrievable breakdown, how about setting fire to an umpire’s coat and placing the charred remains inside a miniature urn? You’ve got to admit, the Shakoor Rana Trophy has a certain ring to it.

The catalogue of acrimony and controversy stretches all the way back to Ted Dexter’s 1961-62 tour to Pakistan, when someone in the England team threw a bucket of water over an umpire. Since when the amount of water required to extinguish the various conflagrations would have required the services of considerably more than a single bucket.

England’s 1932-33 tour to Australia is widely regarded as the most controversial series in cricket history, but compared to their 1987 visit to Pakistan, Bodyline almost qualifies as a love-in. England had already hosted Pakistan in a five Test series at home earlier that year, and it was what happened then which made Faisalabad a dust up waiting to happen.

The first incident came during the first Test at Old Trafford over Pakistan’s liberal use of replacement fielders. On one afternoon it was a toss up as to who had more subs in service – Pakistan or the Royal Navy – prompting the England team manager Micky Stewart to voice his irritation. Which immediately triggered a statement from the visitors using words such as: “improprietous”, “uncalled for”, “disparaging”, “improper” and “objectionable.”

The author was the Pakistani tour manager, Hasib Ahsan, a genial man on the face of it, but who swiftly revealed himself to be someone with a tendency to spout (mostly at great length) without remembering to engage the filter system between brain and mouth. Sample Press conference:

Hasib: “We have doubts about three players.”
Reporter: “Which ones?”
Hasib: “We don’t know yet.”

In further response to the substitute fielder issue, Hasib said: “Where we come from, we leave it to the umpires to judge what’s right and wrong,”  a noble sentiment, but which, alas, failed to survive Mike Gatting being given not out to an lbw appeal in the second Test at Lord’s.

Leaving it to the umpires suddenly became a very poor idea indeed in Hasib’s book, and the arbiter who ruled in favour of Gatting, David Constant, was revealed to have been the subject of a pre-series objection by Pakistan.

“We have no confidence in him,” said Hasib to the representative of the Press Association. “The (Gatting) ball was clearly hitting middle stump.”

This was on day one, but on day two, when Hasib flatly denied making the Gatting comment, the PA man was asked whether he might have got it wrong.

Mistaken Hasib for an indentical twin brother perhaps? “Let’s put it this way,” he replied. “He was wearing a green jacket, and he hadn’t just won the Masters.”

And on it went. In the third Test at Headingley, the Pakistani wicketkeeper made such a fraudulent appeal for a caught behind against Ian Botham – scooping the ball back up after it had spent quite some time rolling around on the ground – that His Beefyness was miffed enough to point out that he had last played caught one handed off the bounce in his primary school playground. With the follow up that, should Mr Yousuf feel minded to continue with this appeal, he’d be happy to discuss the issue further round the back of the pavilion at close of play.

Constant, whose history with Pakistan had its origins in raising his finger to a dubious catch claimed by Gatting in 1982, stood again in the final Test at the Oval, and sure enough, there was another row when he gave Botham not out following a bat-pad appeal. It being the sixth ball of the over, the umpire then walked away towards square leg, which led to accusations of “disrespect” from the captain, Imran Khan, and Hasib making his final contribution to the series by calling Constant a “disgraceful person.”

All of which indicated that a return series in Pakistan only three months later was the equivalent of striking a match in a gunpowder factory. It had already been a long winter, what with the sub-continent’s first World Cup followed by three one-day internationals in Pakistan, and just before the three-match Test series, the Guardian’s cricket correspondent Mike Selvey announced that it was “downhill all the way from now on”.

I was later able to remind him of this while reading him the Shakoor Rana quotes through the door of his hotel bathroom in Faisalabad, at a decibel level sufficient to make myself heard above the groaning and gurgling noises coming from within. The first Test in Lahore had been controversial enough, and Chris Broad, now an ICC match referee, must often contemplate how much he’d have fined himself for declining to leave the crease after being given out had such a system been in operation then.

Fisalabad, as Mike Gatting deliberately misspelt it in his written apology (on a piece of paper that looked as though it had been chewed by a local dog) was followed by Karachi, and the joy of a flight home. Not before, however, a local newspaper editorial had congratulated the English media for “never hesitating to abuse Pakistan while in a drunken state”. To which those of us who’d sampled nothing stronger than fresh lime soda for three months took serious exception.

We all remember 1992, with the ball tampering allegations, and, like Fisalabad, this was another row which made it all the way to Foreign Office level. Why else was the offending 1992 ball locked in a TCCB safe at Lord’s, never to be seen again? Perhaps, along with confidential cabinet documents, it will eventually be made public under the 30 year rule, and put on display alongside the remains of the Pepsi Drinks machine which exploded in Fisalabad (again) in 2006.

This led to a diversion which allowed Shahid Afridi, on a pitch stubbornly refusing to spin, audition for Strictly Come Dancing with a nifty pas de deux right on a spinners’ length. The same Afridi who was once caught eating a cricket ball in Australia – possibly mistaking it for a Cox’s orange pippin.

At least it’s never dull when Pakistan are in town, and while I haven’t studied the latest series odds, I’d like a fiver on the first diplomatic incident coming before lunch on day one of the first Test.

It’s just possible that there is someone out there who thinks that, finally, we may get a controversy-free series.

If so, and they’re reading this, give my regards to the nurse, good luck with the treatment, and I hope they let you out before the season’s over.

This piece originally featured in The Cricket Paper, Friday July 8 2016

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