Thank you, Johnny [Barclay, MCC President].
Johnny mentioned that I am under a lot of pressure because of the various speakers who have delivered lectures before me, but Johnny should know that I learnt to play under pressure, because he was my captain - and not just the captain but the most eccentric cricketer I have ever known. You don’t know what it was like playing under him. It was the most incredible experience. But I have to say that I learnt something very important while playing under him. His captaincy was always trying to challenge the team. Before him, the county captains whom I had met or played under always played to save the game: the priority was not to lose. Johnny was the first county cricket captain I played under who played to win, a big difference. When you go into a game playing not to lose, it means a different strategy, a different team selection. When you go in playing to win, it’s a completely different strategy, attitude, team selection. So that’s one thing I have to say and, yes, I learnt to play under pressure under you, Johnny.
Now, the spirit of the game. I think the first thing where I will differ from Johnny is about what, in order to keep up the spirit of the game, is the most essential feature. In my opinion it is fairness: you must win the match fairly. So when I was playing I was the first captain who started talking about neutral umpires, and I remember getting a lot of flak for it. There would be a lot of criticism that this is not in the spirit of the game, that this is against cricket tradition. Johnny is a traditionalist, and I will go on to say how we differ too about various things that have come up. But I always thought that a match must be won fairly and squarely and, in order to do so, you must have umpires which both teams have faith in.
We used to have the situation in Pakistan, with foreign teams coming in, that we would win the matches, but the credit would not go to the team: it would go to the umpires. And we would come to England and we would think marginal decisions were going against us, so we would complain about the umpiring and we would be told "English umpires make mistakes, but Pakistani umpires cheat". So that is where the idea of neutral umpires started. I thought "There is only one way to play the game in a fairer way", but this was a long struggle, because it wasn’t easy. There was a great amount of resistance to neutral umpires, and the spirit of the game suffered when I was playing. I saw incredible instances. You don’t see those things any more on the cricket field. I remember once when the West Indies were playing New Zealand in the early 80s and I remember 6ft 8in Colin Croft running in to bowl. By this time the West Indies had lost complete trust in the New Zealand umpires. I remember that he ran in to bowl and – we were watching on television – instead of watching him deliver the ball, we suddenly saw the umpire flying 10 yards away; he had hit the umpire. And then of course there was this famous picture of Holding kicking the stump out. So there was a lot of acrimony in the game.
The situation was bad most of the time, but when Pakistan played India it deteriorated to depths you cannot imagine. Losing against India in Pakistan was not an option, and the same in India: for India to let Pakistan win wasn’t an option. So whenever the teams were doing badly they could always rely on the umpires. So Pakistan never won in India; India never won in Pakistan. It was as straight as that. Anyway, I led the tour to India in 1987. India prepared home conditions – a wicket for the off-spinners. We had our strength in fast bowling. The first four matches were all drawn matches, because the wickets were spinners, but they were so slow that there couldn’t be any result. For the fifth Test match India produced in Bangalore one of the most spinning wickets I have ever seen. We tried fast bowlers one over each and then the spinners came along, and I have never seen a spinning wicket like that. Pakistan bowled out for 118, India bowled out for 140, despite home umpires. Pakistan then go in and, given that they are set a total, all the team fight right down to the end, and we set India a total of about 220, something like that. Now India are losing wickets regularly as they are chasing this total, and we have a pack of fielders round the bat. Every over there are a minimum of three appeals, and we reach a point where between us and the first ever series win in India is one man, Sunil Gavaskar. He is now playing this incredible innings and our fielders think they have got him out at least three times by then. Anyway, trust between our team and the Indian umpires had completely broken down.
Imagine the scenario. Here’s this match. I am now imagining in my mind the next day’s headlines “Pakistan team win the first ever Test series in India”. I am already picturing the glory, but, as Sunil Gavaskar’s batting is making them creep nearer and nearer the total, I am watching the faces of the pack round the bat. At first they just made loud appeals, and the appeals went on and on; then they would rush about two yards towards the umpire and then stop, appealing; then they would go about five yards. When they started crossing the half-way wicket I changed my position – I am standing at mid-wicket – so I start moving in towards shortish mid-on. They are now rushing towards the umpire, led by none other than Javed Miandad – and I still remember the expression on his face when he was charging towards the umpire, led by the pack. I would imagine that that is what a suicide bomber must look like before he explodes himself. When there were only three or four yards left between them and the umpire, I then had to make a rush in between and stop these fielders attacking the umpire. My mind now had changed: from envisaging the next day’s headline of first ever series win, I seriously started thinking "Indian umpire murdered on a cricket field - in the first ever act of cross-border terrorism".
In the end, and I am not joking, it was a question of standing in front of the umpire like this, against my own fielders, because the tensions were high. In the ground there was pin-drop silence. For four days everything stopped in India. People were going into hospital with blood pressure; six or seven people died of heart attacks. The streets of India and Pakistan were empty. In such pressure, to put this sort of pressure on umpires I thought was very unfair. The poor umpires – I could see their faces. Neutral umpires have taken all this away. People don’t realise how lucky they are. I remember that whenever I used to talk about neutral umpires I always used to be told "It all evens out in the end", this cliché "It all evens out in the end".
I will indulge in just one other incident. I had retired in 1987, thinking that I am about to be 35, end of a fast bowler’s career, so I don’t want to be left to the mercy of the selectors: I should leave when I am still on the top. So I announce my retirement, thinking that the World Cup in 1987 was the last big tournament I would play. In my time we hardly played any Test cricket. At my peak, when I was at my fastest, we played about five Test matches in three years. I retired because I thought the last big tournament would be the World Cup, there is nothing else ahead, best time to go. When I retired I suddenly discovered that the West Indies invited Pakistan for a tour. West Indies invited Pakistan for a tour because, for some reason, the Australian team had cancelled their tour. Why did the Australian team cancel their tour? It was because in those days – you won’t believe it when you look at the current West Indies team – it was not a question of winning against the West Indies; it was a question of losing with dignity, and clearly the Australian team thought they would lose their dignity. So they cancelled, and Pakistan were invited.
I had already retired, but my great desire was to have one last go at this great team, which I thought was the greatest team in cricket history. I still cannot imagine any team being better than that. People who played against them, and I think Mark played at some level or knew what level they played at, but anyone who played against them – if David Gower were here, he would tell you what it was like, after losing 10-0 against them – could tell you that it was a harrowing experience. After that, everything became easy. After the West Indies, if you played any other team, it was if you were playing against schoolboys. So I thought OK, and then of course the Pakistan dictator at the time, General Sahi, asked me to come back for the sake of Pakistan cricket, and of course my main thing was to have one last chance at the West Indies. So I accept the tour, we go to the West Indies – five one-day matches, Pakistan wiped out 5-0, so I am suddenly thinking "Did I make the right choice?"
In the first Test match, after 15 years West Indies lose a Test match. Pakistan win by a huge margin – eight wickets. It is a three-Test series. In the second Test match at Trinidad, Pakistan bowl the West Indies out for 140, West Indies bowl Pakistan out for 150. Second innings – I narrate this because here was my desire to finish my career beating the greatest team in cricket history. So the match is now poised, and West Indies now lose two wickets in the evening and in the morning they lose the third wicket, and in walks Sir Vivian Richards. West Indies are tottering at 68 for 3 – something like that – and then they lose another wicket, so they are now 70 for 4. Now in the whole ground again there was pin-drop silence. Everyone knew that what stood between us and a series win was Vivian Richards. We knew it, the crowd knew it, Viv certainly knew it, because the gum was being chewed at ten times the normal pace – the jaws were moving very quickly; you knew he was very nervous – but sadly the umpires also knew it. Here’s an in-swing bowler who so many times in my career thought there were LBWs that went against him, because I was an in-swing bowler mainly. I don’t remember any of them, but I remember this decision as if it happened yesterday.
So 70 for 4, the series would have been all over on the third day of the Test match, and Viv Richards coming in, struggling really in this aggressive mood, chewing gum, jaws working very hard, and I still remember this ball. The bowlers here such as Jeff Thomson would blast batsmen out; he wouldn’t bowl these subtle things. Anyway, I was bowling this out-swinger, a cross-breeze blowing: to Viv you always bowled out-swingers. Johnny would know this. When a bowler is bowling out-swingers, you don’t take your front foot out too far; you play from the crease, because you are waiting for the ball to do its work. So he was playing from the crease, I was bowling out-swingers, and then something happened – an intentional out-swinger, but the ball pitches and comes back, not intentionally. The bowler doesn’t know it, so neither does the batsman know it. I still remember, it was missing his leg and off stump, but hitting the middle. He got it right standing in front of the crease. It was 22 years ago, but I can still picture it – middle stump being knocked out of the ground, hit him flush in front. We appealed, and we appealed, and we appealed, because everyone knew everything depended on the decision. And I looked at the umpire and he wouldn’t look at me: he kept looking down, and he wasn’t given out.
So Viv Richards went on to make 100. We were in the end 40 runs behind with one wicket left, match drawn, and we didn’t win the series. It was a one all draw. And when I saw this referral system I thought "God, if only we’d had that". Johnny of course doesn’t agree with it, but I think this is a great innovation, because if you believe that the spirit of the game is to play the game fairly and you want accurate results, you must eliminate every chance of there being a wrong result, because that is how you will find that on the cricket field the atmosphere is very harmonious. A bitter atmosphere, anger, all the tantrums we used to see on the grounds always happened when players felt that they were being cheated by the home umpires, but now neutral umpires have changed everything, and what little technology we have has also eliminated so many of the controversies: run-outs are no longer an issue. The problem is that I think we can even go a step further. I completely agree with these referral systems. I think it is a very positive thing.
So in my time what has improved? Umpiring has improved a lot. The results are much fairer now. In the old days you could not win an away series, but that is no longer the case. Things have improved as far as the umpiring has gone, and I think should improve further with the use of technology. I am all for the use of technology to get fairer results.
What are the other things that have improved? I think that what has improved tremendously is the fielding standards. You can’t imagine what a sea change in fielding has taken place. I remember going on my first tour to the West Indies. That was my last one. The first one I went over as a 23-year-old, and I remember bowling to these two great butchers – Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge. It was a real experience for a fast bowler to bowl to them. Rather than you scaring them, they would be scaring you. I was an in-swing bowler, not very accurate. Someone earlier on had described me "right arm over, anywhere", so it was going all over the place down the leg side. Anyway these two batsmen were playing me on the on side and I had our other fast bowler fielding on the fine leg boundary. As it is, I was being thrashed all over the place. To make matters worse, each time the ball went to him, five yards either side, he wouldn’t even bother to move and then, if it was close enough – forget about bending down or diving – he would just put a boot there to stop it. So I was furious. At lunch time, having been thrashed, a hot day, I went in and I told my captain "Could you not tell him to field a bit better than that?" The captain looked at me – he was of course a senior player – and the two sort of looked at me and I got a real telling-off. They said "Don’t you know he needs to conserve his energy at fine leg for his bowling?"
Johnny mentioned that I am under a lot of pressure because of the various speakers who have delivered lectures before me, but Johnny should know that I learnt to play under pressure, because he was my captain - and not just the captain but the most eccentric cricketer I have ever known. You don’t know what it was like playing under him. It was the most incredible experience. But I have to say that I learnt something very important while playing under him. His captaincy was always trying to challenge the team. Before him, the county captains whom I had met or played under always played to save the game: the priority was not to lose. Johnny was the first county cricket captain I played under who played to win, a big difference. When you go into a game playing not to lose, it means a different strategy, a different team selection. When you go in playing to win, it’s a completely different strategy, attitude, team selection. So that’s one thing I have to say and, yes, I learnt to play under pressure under you, Johnny.
Now, the spirit of the game. I think the first thing where I will differ from Johnny is about what, in order to keep up the spirit of the game, is the most essential feature. In my opinion it is fairness: you must win the match fairly. So when I was playing I was the first captain who started talking about neutral umpires, and I remember getting a lot of flak for it. There would be a lot of criticism that this is not in the spirit of the game, that this is against cricket tradition. Johnny is a traditionalist, and I will go on to say how we differ too about various things that have come up. But I always thought that a match must be won fairly and squarely and, in order to do so, you must have umpires which both teams have faith in.
We used to have the situation in Pakistan, with foreign teams coming in, that we would win the matches, but the credit would not go to the team: it would go to the umpires. And we would come to England and we would think marginal decisions were going against us, so we would complain about the umpiring and we would be told "English umpires make mistakes, but Pakistani umpires cheat". So that is where the idea of neutral umpires started. I thought "There is only one way to play the game in a fairer way", but this was a long struggle, because it wasn’t easy. There was a great amount of resistance to neutral umpires, and the spirit of the game suffered when I was playing. I saw incredible instances. You don’t see those things any more on the cricket field. I remember once when the West Indies were playing New Zealand in the early 80s and I remember 6ft 8in Colin Croft running in to bowl. By this time the West Indies had lost complete trust in the New Zealand umpires. I remember that he ran in to bowl and – we were watching on television – instead of watching him deliver the ball, we suddenly saw the umpire flying 10 yards away; he had hit the umpire. And then of course there was this famous picture of Holding kicking the stump out. So there was a lot of acrimony in the game.
The situation was bad most of the time, but when Pakistan played India it deteriorated to depths you cannot imagine. Losing against India in Pakistan was not an option, and the same in India: for India to let Pakistan win wasn’t an option. So whenever the teams were doing badly they could always rely on the umpires. So Pakistan never won in India; India never won in Pakistan. It was as straight as that. Anyway, I led the tour to India in 1987. India prepared home conditions – a wicket for the off-spinners. We had our strength in fast bowling. The first four matches were all drawn matches, because the wickets were spinners, but they were so slow that there couldn’t be any result. For the fifth Test match India produced in Bangalore one of the most spinning wickets I have ever seen. We tried fast bowlers one over each and then the spinners came along, and I have never seen a spinning wicket like that. Pakistan bowled out for 118, India bowled out for 140, despite home umpires. Pakistan then go in and, given that they are set a total, all the team fight right down to the end, and we set India a total of about 220, something like that. Now India are losing wickets regularly as they are chasing this total, and we have a pack of fielders round the bat. Every over there are a minimum of three appeals, and we reach a point where between us and the first ever series win in India is one man, Sunil Gavaskar. He is now playing this incredible innings and our fielders think they have got him out at least three times by then. Anyway, trust between our team and the Indian umpires had completely broken down.
Imagine the scenario. Here’s this match. I am now imagining in my mind the next day’s headlines “Pakistan team win the first ever Test series in India”. I am already picturing the glory, but, as Sunil Gavaskar’s batting is making them creep nearer and nearer the total, I am watching the faces of the pack round the bat. At first they just made loud appeals, and the appeals went on and on; then they would rush about two yards towards the umpire and then stop, appealing; then they would go about five yards. When they started crossing the half-way wicket I changed my position – I am standing at mid-wicket – so I start moving in towards shortish mid-on. They are now rushing towards the umpire, led by none other than Javed Miandad – and I still remember the expression on his face when he was charging towards the umpire, led by the pack. I would imagine that that is what a suicide bomber must look like before he explodes himself. When there were only three or four yards left between them and the umpire, I then had to make a rush in between and stop these fielders attacking the umpire. My mind now had changed: from envisaging the next day’s headline of first ever series win, I seriously started thinking "Indian umpire murdered on a cricket field - in the first ever act of cross-border terrorism".
In the end, and I am not joking, it was a question of standing in front of the umpire like this, against my own fielders, because the tensions were high. In the ground there was pin-drop silence. For four days everything stopped in India. People were going into hospital with blood pressure; six or seven people died of heart attacks. The streets of India and Pakistan were empty. In such pressure, to put this sort of pressure on umpires I thought was very unfair. The poor umpires – I could see their faces. Neutral umpires have taken all this away. People don’t realise how lucky they are. I remember that whenever I used to talk about neutral umpires I always used to be told "It all evens out in the end", this cliché "It all evens out in the end".
I will indulge in just one other incident. I had retired in 1987, thinking that I am about to be 35, end of a fast bowler’s career, so I don’t want to be left to the mercy of the selectors: I should leave when I am still on the top. So I announce my retirement, thinking that the World Cup in 1987 was the last big tournament I would play. In my time we hardly played any Test cricket. At my peak, when I was at my fastest, we played about five Test matches in three years. I retired because I thought the last big tournament would be the World Cup, there is nothing else ahead, best time to go. When I retired I suddenly discovered that the West Indies invited Pakistan for a tour. West Indies invited Pakistan for a tour because, for some reason, the Australian team had cancelled their tour. Why did the Australian team cancel their tour? It was because in those days – you won’t believe it when you look at the current West Indies team – it was not a question of winning against the West Indies; it was a question of losing with dignity, and clearly the Australian team thought they would lose their dignity. So they cancelled, and Pakistan were invited.
I had already retired, but my great desire was to have one last go at this great team, which I thought was the greatest team in cricket history. I still cannot imagine any team being better than that. People who played against them, and I think Mark played at some level or knew what level they played at, but anyone who played against them – if David Gower were here, he would tell you what it was like, after losing 10-0 against them – could tell you that it was a harrowing experience. After that, everything became easy. After the West Indies, if you played any other team, it was if you were playing against schoolboys. So I thought OK, and then of course the Pakistan dictator at the time, General Sahi, asked me to come back for the sake of Pakistan cricket, and of course my main thing was to have one last chance at the West Indies. So I accept the tour, we go to the West Indies – five one-day matches, Pakistan wiped out 5-0, so I am suddenly thinking "Did I make the right choice?"
In the first Test match, after 15 years West Indies lose a Test match. Pakistan win by a huge margin – eight wickets. It is a three-Test series. In the second Test match at Trinidad, Pakistan bowl the West Indies out for 140, West Indies bowl Pakistan out for 150. Second innings – I narrate this because here was my desire to finish my career beating the greatest team in cricket history. So the match is now poised, and West Indies now lose two wickets in the evening and in the morning they lose the third wicket, and in walks Sir Vivian Richards. West Indies are tottering at 68 for 3 – something like that – and then they lose another wicket, so they are now 70 for 4. Now in the whole ground again there was pin-drop silence. Everyone knew that what stood between us and a series win was Vivian Richards. We knew it, the crowd knew it, Viv certainly knew it, because the gum was being chewed at ten times the normal pace – the jaws were moving very quickly; you knew he was very nervous – but sadly the umpires also knew it. Here’s an in-swing bowler who so many times in my career thought there were LBWs that went against him, because I was an in-swing bowler mainly. I don’t remember any of them, but I remember this decision as if it happened yesterday.
So 70 for 4, the series would have been all over on the third day of the Test match, and Viv Richards coming in, struggling really in this aggressive mood, chewing gum, jaws working very hard, and I still remember this ball. The bowlers here such as Jeff Thomson would blast batsmen out; he wouldn’t bowl these subtle things. Anyway, I was bowling this out-swinger, a cross-breeze blowing: to Viv you always bowled out-swingers. Johnny would know this. When a bowler is bowling out-swingers, you don’t take your front foot out too far; you play from the crease, because you are waiting for the ball to do its work. So he was playing from the crease, I was bowling out-swingers, and then something happened – an intentional out-swinger, but the ball pitches and comes back, not intentionally. The bowler doesn’t know it, so neither does the batsman know it. I still remember, it was missing his leg and off stump, but hitting the middle. He got it right standing in front of the crease. It was 22 years ago, but I can still picture it – middle stump being knocked out of the ground, hit him flush in front. We appealed, and we appealed, and we appealed, because everyone knew everything depended on the decision. And I looked at the umpire and he wouldn’t look at me: he kept looking down, and he wasn’t given out.
So Viv Richards went on to make 100. We were in the end 40 runs behind with one wicket left, match drawn, and we didn’t win the series. It was a one all draw. And when I saw this referral system I thought "God, if only we’d had that". Johnny of course doesn’t agree with it, but I think this is a great innovation, because if you believe that the spirit of the game is to play the game fairly and you want accurate results, you must eliminate every chance of there being a wrong result, because that is how you will find that on the cricket field the atmosphere is very harmonious. A bitter atmosphere, anger, all the tantrums we used to see on the grounds always happened when players felt that they were being cheated by the home umpires, but now neutral umpires have changed everything, and what little technology we have has also eliminated so many of the controversies: run-outs are no longer an issue. The problem is that I think we can even go a step further. I completely agree with these referral systems. I think it is a very positive thing.
So in my time what has improved? Umpiring has improved a lot. The results are much fairer now. In the old days you could not win an away series, but that is no longer the case. Things have improved as far as the umpiring has gone, and I think should improve further with the use of technology. I am all for the use of technology to get fairer results.
What are the other things that have improved? I think that what has improved tremendously is the fielding standards. You can’t imagine what a sea change in fielding has taken place. I remember going on my first tour to the West Indies. That was my last one. The first one I went over as a 23-year-old, and I remember bowling to these two great butchers – Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge. It was a real experience for a fast bowler to bowl to them. Rather than you scaring them, they would be scaring you. I was an in-swing bowler, not very accurate. Someone earlier on had described me "right arm over, anywhere", so it was going all over the place down the leg side. Anyway these two batsmen were playing me on the on side and I had our other fast bowler fielding on the fine leg boundary. As it is, I was being thrashed all over the place. To make matters worse, each time the ball went to him, five yards either side, he wouldn’t even bother to move and then, if it was close enough – forget about bending down or diving – he would just put a boot there to stop it. So I was furious. At lunch time, having been thrashed, a hot day, I went in and I told my captain "Could you not tell him to field a bit better than that?" The captain looked at me – he was of course a senior player – and the two sort of looked at me and I got a real telling-off. They said "Don’t you know he needs to conserve his energy at fine leg for his bowling?"
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