Botham And Lamb Accused Of Rejecting "Hand Of Friendship" (25 Jul 1996)

25 July 1996

Botham and Lamb accused of rejecting `hand of friendship`

LONDON, Wednesday - Former England cricket legends Ian Botham and Allan Lamb were accused in the High Court on Tuesday of spurning the ``hand of friendship`` offered them by former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan.

Botham and Lamb are suing Khan over an ``offensive personal attack`` on them in India Today magazine which, they say, called them racist, uneducated and lacking class and upbringing.

Botham alone is suing over a May 1994 story in The Sun, which, he says accused him of ball tampering - something he says he has never done.

Imran, who denies libel, says that his words were taken out of context and that he was only trying to defend himself.

Opening the former Pakistani skipper`s case, George Carman, QC said the jury might think it was ``a thousand pities that these great warriors of sport could not have made their peace and shaken hands``.

They should conclude that Imran Khan had offered ``the hand of friendship`` and did not want the court battle, but his offer was spurned.

Imran had written ``perfectly decent, kind letters`` to them and offered them, in July 1994, a ``golden opportunity`` - which had been turned down flat - to set the record straight in an open letter to The Times.

It would have made the vital points that he had been seriously misquoted in the India Today article and never suggested Botham and Lamb were racist - and would also have made it plain that he had never accused Ian Botham of cheating.

And Imran had intended to express regret if he had been misunderstood by others and caused distress to anyone or their families.

He added that nobody could deny the trial was ``emotionally charged`` with ``issues of race, class and country moving in and out of this case like black clouds.``

He asked: ``Who raised the stakes in this case? Who wanted the battle?``

``Who are the volunteers to the courtroom and who is the conscript?``.

Imran listened as Mr. Carman said that he had triumphantly retired from cricket in 1992, aged 39, after winning the World Cup for Pakistan.

Since then, his energies had been devoted to establishing in Pakistan the first totally privately funded cancer hospital in the world.

Since it opened in December 1994, 40,000 people had been treated - over 90 per cent of them without charge. In April this year, Imran had narrowly escaped with his life when a bomb devastated the hospital, killing seven people and injuring 35 others.

``Does such a man want a battle in the court room?`` asked the QC.

Earlier, former England batsman David Gower, who scored more than 8,000 runs in Test matches before retiring to pursue a media career, said he had known Botham and Lamb for years and they were not racists.

Shown video footage of himself, Botham and Lamb looking at the ball during the 1982 series, he thought it looked as though Botham was tampering the ball.

``Knowing Ian`s thumbs - not intimately - but knowing them, I think he`s pushing the ball back and my view is you are allowed to do that.``

He had never seen Botham tampering with the ball.

Cross-examined by Mr. Carman, Gower agreed that Imran had sent him the same conciliatory letter he had sent Botham and Lamb after the appearance of a biography in which ``negative comments`` were attributed to him.

Gower agreed that he had written, in reply: ``Fear not. You have no need to worry about the comments``, and assured Imran that he was not hurt.

He agreed with comments by England cricket captain, Mike Atherton, that bowlers had `succumbed`` to the temptation of ball tampering many a time, but it was not right that everyone was doing it.

Mike Atherton, accompanied by English cricket coach David Lloyd, took their seats in court as Gower said that ball tampering was not accepted by the game and that virtually every player would like to see the laws upheld.

Source :: Daily News (https://www.lanka.net)