Re: Cricket - on Second Thoughts: Imran Khan's Pakistan
I remember reading about that series in WI in 70's when i was in 7th grade and i was reading Imran's Bio "All Round View".
One interesting thing he wrote was that when they landed in WI (that was after AUS series where Imran bowled one of the best spells of fast bowling in cricket history and won Sydney test for Pak), the word out there was that this guy(Imran) bowls as fast as LIllee. Now during their first net session in WI, gary sobers was around and he looked at
Imran andsaid well if this guy can bowl as fast as lillee then Lillee must be bowling half his pace.Imran said he made a note of those words and was going to do anything to make Sobers change his opinion, those days Imran used to bowl with a Jeff Thompson like Slinging action and he enjoyed bowling at those quick WI wickets and by the end of the series he took 25 wickets in 5 games and even played with a slight injury. Its the same series wher a famous comment (who knows true or not) was made by a short leg fielder of Pak about Alvin Kalicharan, who according to him was shaking in one of the games while facing Imran. Imran remembers the role of WI crowd in that series and, wrote that crowd senesd
that imran was Pak's main fast bowler, so every time Imran went to bat, crowd would want WI bowlers to bowl bouncer at imran, as Imran (unlike the indain teams pace (LOL) bowlers that toured WI a season b4) also gave WI alot of shot pitched stuff to WI batsmen.
imran went over that series in detail and specially wrote very highly about Wasim Raja's brave batting in that series, the way Wasim raja was facing the bowling of Roberts (WI's best bowler in the series) was absolutely un matchable. In one of the games where ROberts was bowling absolutely furiously, Asif Iqbal being a senior cricker asked
Raja, if hewants Asif to face more of ROberts and Raja declined offer saying that he doesnt mind facing robers. In that series Record # of sixes in a test series(i dont know if he still holds the record or not) Another player that got mentioned in very good words was Haroon Rashid who started his career from that series and imran wrote that he still remembers the two sixes of bouncers bowled at Haroon by Croft that he launched towards mid wicket.