Shakoor Rana may get to umpire and England match

Shakoor Rana, the umpire involved in the infamous Test match dispute with Mike Gatting, could be umpiring an England A match on the current tour of Pakistan. The very suggestion brings both enthusiasm and excitement to his voice.

"I would love to umpire an England A match," he says. "That would prove the previous chapter is closed." The ghost of one of English cricket`s darkest hours may be about to materialise.

Shakoor is looking forward to watching England A take on a Pakistan Cricket Board XI in his native Lahore next Saturday when he will "say hello to my good friend John Emburey". The tourists may then make a much closer acquaintance with the man who brought a Test to a standstill and began Gatting`s demise as England captain.

A campaign to ensure Shakoor stands in at least one match of the first major English tour of Pakistan since the infamous Faisalabad affair of 1987 is gaining momentum here. "I`m talking to people about this to see what I can do," said Omar Kureishi, vicechairman of the Pakistan World Cup committee. "Shakoor`s standing would be the perfect bridge-building exercise between the countries. Even if the umpires for the tour have been appointed by the PCB, they can be changed."

Speaking exclusively to the Sunday Telegraph, Shakoor welcomed the development and talked openly about his feelings towards Gatting and his contented family life in Old Anarkali, a prosperous district of Lahore. Time appears to have mellowed him but there are still flashes of the stubborness which saw unprecedented scenes of conflict between an umpire and an England captain on a cricket field.

"Gatting did the wrong thing when he started abusing me and there were a lot of words exchanged. But I would handle it differently if it happened again," said Shakoor, now 58 and still working for Pakistan railways in Lahore as an assistant sports officer, coaching cricket and lecturing on umpiring.

"I didn`t like what happened and would be much more calm now. But I have no regrets. Everybody in Pakistan knows Shakoor Rana and it has had no bad effect on my life."

It did not do much for his umpiring career, however. Since the finger-pointing episode at Faisalabad, when a day`s play was lost while he insisted on an apology from Gatting which finally came under protest when the TCCB insisted the England captain did so, Shakoor has been restricted to just two Tests and Pakistani domestic cricket.

He will not stand on England`s tour if Arif Abbasi, chief executive of the PCB, has his way. "I am on record as saying that man will never stand in another Test," said Abbasi. "If I can help it, that will remain the case. What he did was wrong."

Not according to Shakoor, even now. A popular theory after Faisalabad was that the umpire was poised to apologise along with Gatting in a compromise to ensure the Test continued but, with Pakistan struggling to stay in the game, captain Javed Miandad talked Shakoor out of it. Not so, he says.

"I was never going to apologise," said Shakoor. "I`d done nothing wrong. I`m still very proud of Mike Gatting`s written apology. I keep it under my pillow and read it from time to time."

He has twice visited England since 1987, once on holiday and once thanks to a #7,000 cheque from a tabloid newspaper for an interview, but his efforts to talk to the Middlesex captain were rebuffed.

"I went to watch him play and said `Hello Mike, how are you?` " said Shakoor. "He said: `Oh God, not you again.` He was upset but I just wanted to bury the hatchet.

"I would have just told him to forget Faisalabad and let us be friends. But I would not have said sorry."