Was Imran Khan a severe and regular ball tamperor?

[rtmohanlal]

is this true? i couldn't believe this at first. but his own admission that he had tampered with the condition of the ball during a county match with a bottle top once prompts me to believe so. “I have occasionally scratched the ball and lifted the seam. Only once did I use an object. Indeed, the most startling admission so far released concerns a county match between Sussex and Hampshire in 1991. 'The ball was not deviating at all,' Imran is quoted as saying. 'So I got the 12th man to bring on a bottle top and it started to move around a lot. I occasionally scratched the side (of the ball) and lifted the seam.' Aamir Sohail : “Imran damaged Pakistan cricket by encouraging our bowlers to tamper with the ball. This has led to a culture where we can’t produce good new ball bowlers or quality openers.” “After every lunch or tea interval the ball did crazy things,” recalled Ravi Shastri of an early tour to Pakistan. Once, after the final Indian wicket went down, the ball rolled down behind the wicket to the fine boundary and was picked up by veteran cricket journalist Rajan Bala. There seemed to be something sticky on the red cherry. When Bala asked Imran, his answer was combined acerbic wit and skilful evasion: “Must have been something the Indian batsmen left behind.” When Imran took six for six from 23 deliveries, including a hat-trick, for Sussex against Warwickshire in 1983, umpire Don Oslear voiced his suspicions. Although Alvin Kallicharran, who saw the destruction from the non-striker’s end, deemed it the best bowling he had ever seen, others were not that effusive. England seamer Chris Old told the Daily Mirror, “I saw the ball [imran] had tampered with, and it looked like a dog had chewed it.” According to Oslear, “This was the first time I had seen one side of the ball scratched and torn with pieces of leather ripped out. The quarter seam had been opened up at a point where it meets the stitched seam and it appeared that some of the stitches had been cut. This allowed a triangle of leather to be pulled up from the surface of the ball, it was a piece large enough to be gripped between forefinger and thumb, and by which the ball could be suspended.”A report was sent to Lord’s. Allan Lamb reported a relaxed exchange between Imran Khan and Robin Smith outside the wine bar at St John’s Wood before the start of the Lord’s Test against West Indies in 1991. Imran asked Smith, the Hampshire captain, how Aaqib was doing. According to Lamb: “Robin said, ‘Very well — he is doing a good job for us but has got warned on numerous occasions for tampering with the ball.’ Imran replied, ‘Yes, I’ve told him to be more discreet when he does it’” Mohinder Amarnath in an interview after the tour said that he once saw the Pakistani team take the ball with them to their dressing room during lunch. When he protested to the umpire, he was told quite rudely to keep quiet and bat.I have always wondered about what really was the difference between the two sides on that tour. The kind of movement Imran was getting on those tracks was, quite frankly, very hard to achieve without some sort of thing being done to the ball. Of course, this sort of thing is conjecture and nothing can be conclusively proved either way.My suspicion about the state of the ball on that tour was later again aroused when Imran admitted to using a bottle top in a sussex game in 1981 - ie the year before we toured Pakistan. He said that "the ball was doing absolutely nothing, so I had the 12th man bring out a bottle top and then it started moving all over the place" or something to this effect. If he was motivated enough to use such means in a game for sussex when the ball was not doing much, it is hard to believe he would not use such means in a game against India.Imran was a great bowler, but I do think that his feats in that particular series were achieved with some amount of help from factors other than just bowling skill. Indeed, his performance in that series still stands as a record (42 wickets IIRC). Maninder singh :It was so blatant. Whenever the Pakistani team took the field after a break, the ball would start doing strange things. I also felt it was never the same ball used after each break. Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz would come out and make the ball talk; it used to move all over the place. The ball would cut back and hit the batsman in the midriff and chest. Everyone knows GR Viswanath was once out shouldering arms to a ball. Imran Khan was genuinely quick and the “made up” ball only made things worse for us. After a while we stopped protesting. The reverse swing made them unplayable. The thing with reverse swing is it cuts back so late that batsmen find it very difficult to adjust to the pace. Balwinder sandhu : By the way, according to me, they hold the copyright when it comes to ball-tampering. They are masters at it and they taught others," Sandhu told MiD DAY. During his debut series in Pakistan, 1982-83, Sandhu suspected something was being done to the ball by the Pakistani bowlers and fielders during drink intervals. "Our doubts were confirmed when some of their players, who were dropped during the series told us that the ball was tampered with," said Sandhu. John Reid, the New Zealand Cricket president, believes a lack of video evidence will not harm the allegations of ball-tampering against Pakistan... ..Reid said Imran Khan, who last week labelled Hair a "mini-Hitler", was one of the pioneers of tampering. "He wrote a book about it," he said. "Have a look at the book. There was a chapter in there saying how to do it. It's a joke, I'm afraid." .. all these quotes from quite a handful of cricketers makes me firmly believe that he did it on several occasions and that too exceeding all the limits.hence i doubt his credentials as a top player of all time. your thoughts.

[Cricket_Hacker]

yes him and the two W's were known for this

[velu]

imran himself accepted it .. so we have to deal with it

[rtmohanlal]

imran himself accepted it .. so we have to deal with it

ok..but it came as a real shock for me because i considered him as one of the best all rounders of all time.. if not the best.but now i don't rate him that highly.any way it is my personnel opinion.

[thongale]

Manoj Prabhakar and Kapil Dev was found tampering the ball in 1993 tour of SL. So Indians also have a history.

[kubrickian]

Of course, they did this regularly and this is common knowledge. Not many were aware of ball tampering and reverse swing and there were very few cameras around the ground back then too.

[Midfielder]

ok..but it came as a real shock for me because i considered him as one of the best all rounders of all time.. if not the best.but now i don't rate him that highly.any way it is my personnel opinion.

Why is it a shock to you? A single seam ball can only do so much. Imran new what exactly he was doing and he passed this witchcraft down to generation of players who have been doing that. Like Afridi caught snacking on the ball. The follow up question in your innocent mind should be when pakistan now complaints that they don't have any talented bowlers does that mean their talent has dropped or they have so many cameras on the field that they cannot cheat. Later is the case because India always produces good batsman. All pakistan has some bowlers who can bowl straight down with little control. Their current limited success is due to another arm bending cheat Saeed Ajmal. So in short Imran was tempering the ball and he was a cheat. He was no hero.

[Midfielder]

Manoj Prabhakar and Kapil Dev was found tampering the ball in 1993 tour of SL. So Indians also have a history.

Topic is Imran and stick to that. You have the freedom to start a new thread on Manoj.

[rtmohanlal]

Manoj Prabhakar and Kapil Dev was found tampering the ball in 1993 tour of SL. So Indians also have a history.

when the allegations about ball tampering had germinated Kapil sweared that he never INTERFERED with the ball.Imran him self has admitted that Kapil never tampered with the ball.

[rtmohanlal]

Why is it a shock to you? A single seam ball can only do so much. Imran new what exactly he was doing and he passed this witchcraft down to generation of players who have been doing that. Like Afridi caught snacking on the ball. The follow up question in your innocent mind should be when pakistan now complaints that they don't have any talented bowlers does that mean their talent has dropped or they have so many cameras on the field that they cannot cheat. Later is the case because India always produces good batsman. All pakistan has some bowlers who can bowl straight down with little control. Their current limited success is due to another arm bending cheat Saeed Ajmal. So in short Imran was tempering the ball and he was a cheat. He was no hero.

no need for you to get emotional..i had heard several months back Imran claiming that he did use bottle top once.i left it then and there because i too believed him because of him being one of my favourite cricketers of all time. some 2 to 3 days back i just accidently read some thing more about it related to some other matter. but then a lot of details were revealed to me when i browsed more about the topic. so it came as a real shock for me

[Deleted_User_1]

but for the ball tampering, Imran, Sarfaraz and the two Ws may not have been hailed as ATGs like they do.

[sachin34357]

was it even illegal back then?

[Midfielder]

no need for you to get emotional..i had heard several months back Imran claiming that he did use bottle top once.i left it then and there because i too believed him because of him being one of my favourite cricketers of all time. some 2 to 3 days back i just accidently read some thing more about it related to some other matter. but then a lot of details were revealed to me when i browsed more about the topic. so it came as a real shock for me

I am not emotional but please you need to be rational. So he used it once and stopped it. You want to believe those events then so be it.

[rtmohanlal]

I am not emotional but please you need to be rational. So he used it once and stopped it. You want to believe those events then so be it.

as i described this is not an instinctive conclusion. first him self revealing, then Aamer Sohail alleging him, then all those i browsed

[Midfielder]

as i described this is not an instinctive conclusion. first him self revealing' date=' then Aamer Sohail alleging him, then all those i browsed[/quote'] It was a culture back then. English players were doing it too all the time.I stil remember John Lever used vaseline in India to maintain the shine and never got banned for that.But the topic is Imran so let us stick to that.

[G_B_]

my father saw him play in county cricket in england. The answer he said was yes. He said Imran did not tamper the ball when his side was winning or even when conditions suited swing bowling ie when its overcast in England However some county teams at time decided to roll out flat pitches to counter not just imran but the WI quicks who were part of the county circuit. Thats when he used to tamper.

[Temujin Khaghan]

imran never expected the backlash he would get reg. ball tampering

[Marut]

IMO, all bowlers have done ball tampering at some time or the other. This is happening now also - lots of allegiations against the Saffers and the Poms recently. Imran was a great bowler even without tampering, but his insane bowling records ( at one point in the 80s, he averaged like 14 for four or five years) would not have been possible without tampering more than what other bowlers do.

[jf1gp_1]

isnt shining only one side of the ball legal way of tampering ?

[moniker]

isnt shining only one side of the ball legal way of tampering ?

Shining one side of the ball isn't tampering. Roughening up the other side through artificial means is.