Imran Khan: An ambiguous law under scrutiny in High Court (5 Aug 1996)

August 5 1996

An ambiguous law under scrutiny in High Court

By Imran Khan

TO FULLY understand the costly libel action against me one would have to go back to the summer of 1992 when Pakistan were playing England in a five-Test series. It became one of the most controversial series in cricket history since the infamous 'Bodyline' tour.

The Pakistan bowlers were being accused by a section of the English media of tampering with the ball and of their success being largely attributed to their skills in cheating rather than bowling.

Just before the end of the tour, a ball was changed in a one-day international at Lord's and all hell broke loose. The Pakistan fast bowlers were labelled cheats by certain tabloids. While the Pakistanis were being called cheats, there was no response from either the Pakistan or England cricketing authorities or from the ICC.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan cricket team, and especially the two great fast bowlers Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, were completely demoralised by their achievements being so denigrated in the media. They were driven to give a press statement protesting their innocence.

The amazing aspect about the whole controversy was that the English umpires, despite repeated ball inspections, had not lodged any official complaint against the Pakistan bowlers. This is extremely significant because, according to Law 42.2 dealing with unfair play, the umpire is the sole authority to decide what is fair and unfair play. The official reason for the ball being changed at Lord's was that it had gone out of shape and not that it had been tampered with, as was generally being suggested.

The controversy again flared up when Sarfraz Nawaz took Allan Lamb to court in 1993 after being accused of ball-tampering. Some English players joined forces with Lamb in accusing the Pakistanis of tampering with the ball. The court case became an England-Pakistan battle rather than anything to do with the ball-tampering issue.

The ICC or the England and Pakistan boards never cleared up the issue. I suspect they did not know what to do about it. Meanwhile, the Pakistanis continued to feel victimised and hurt by the systematic knocking of their heroes. In particular, the Pakistani community in Britain were offended by the fact that their heroes were being called cheats.

All this time, no one fully understood what ball-tampering really was. Since the Pakistan bowlers were accused of scratching the ball to get reverse swing, for the cricket-watching public and, indeed, most cricket journalists, ball-tampering became synonymous with scratching of the ball.

At this stage, I had nothing to do with cricket. Despite various attempts by the Pakistan cricket authorities to get me involved in our cricket set-up, I had distanced myself from the game, not only because the hospital I had established in Pakistan was taking all my time but also because I wanted to move on in life.

However, I watched these unfair attacks on our team from the sidelines with a lot of pain. Not only was I proud of helping in the development of both Waqar and Wasim into world-class bowlers, I also took great pride in participating in the transformation of the Pakistan team from being the poor relations of world cricket in 1971, when I began my international cricket career, to one-day world champions when I retired in 1992.

The law was made to stop bowlers interfering with the ball to get an unfair advantage. But, unfortunately, it made no provision for repairing or restoring the ball if it was damaged during play.

I tried to bring some sanity to the issue by writing two articles on ball-tampering in The Daily Telegraph in the summer of 1992. Again, in 1993, during the Lamb-Sarfraz court case, I wrote saying more or less the same thing, that scratching was only one type of ball-tampering and there were various other ways of tampering with the ball. Also, that ball-tampering had gone on since the game began in one form or another. Most importantly, that ball-tampering, within limits, had become an accepted part of cricket and only beyond certain limits could it be considered cheating. If the law governing ball-tampering, i.e., a bowler cannot do anything to alter the condition of the ball, was applied literally and stringently then there can be very few bowlers who have not tampered with the ball in some way at some stage in their careers.

Here it is important to understand Law 42.5, dealing with unfair play. The law was made to stop bowlers interfering with the ball to get an unfair advantage. But, unfortunately, it made no provision for repairing or restoring the ball if it was damaged during play. For instance, if a part of the seam became depressed and a bowler restored it to its original condition with his thumb nail, it was the same offence according to the law as, for instance, a bowler using his nails to raise the seam above its normal level to get an unfair advantage.

A new ball starts deteriorating the moment it comes into play and bowlers shine and work at it to slow down this deterioration. According to the law, whether you simply repair the ball or use an outside substance to get an unfair advantage, the offence is the same. Because the law is so all-encompassing, most bowlers, without even realising it, break it regularly.

For instance, Ian Botham, in the witness box, said that he often squeezed the ball back into shape as an out-of-shape ball does not help the bowler at all. According to him, it was an accepted practice. Now on a strict interpretation of the rules, by squeezing a cricket ball into shape, it could be argued that, without realising it, he was breaking the law by trying to alter its condition.

The other problem with the law is that it is impossible to implement. This is not to say that just because you can get away with it, it is legitimate to break the law. Simply, that this law is hard to interpret and impractical.

For example, if a bowler restores a seam to its original position or scratches a ball which is already roughened up through normal wear and tear, how can an umpire notice any change in the condition of the ball? Even if he suddenly sees one side of the ball roughened up, how does he tell whether it was made by a bowler's fingernails or, say, by it hitting the concrete outside the boundary line?

Never in my 21 years of international cricket did I even see a player warned for ball-tampering.

As a result of this ambiguous law, over the years certain forms of tampering, in the words of Mike Atherton, became tacitly accepted by the players and umpires and became part of the game.

Never in my 21 years of international cricket did I even see a player warned for ball-tampering.

The whole issue about ball-tampering became so huge in 1992, not because the Pakistanis were cheating but because hardly anyone in England understood the phenomenon of reverse swing. In the conventional method of swing bowling, as the ball got older it swung less and less. With reverse swing, the older the ball got the more it swung - something which most county cricketers fully comprehend now but at the time viewed with suspicion.

In November-December 1993, while trying to explain ball-tampering within acceptable limits to a journalist who was writing a biography of me, I told him about the one incident in my career when I crossed the limit by using a bottle top to roughen up one side of the cricket ball. When the book was published in May 1994, there was an uproar. Rather than explaining ball-tampering, the bottle-top incident had the opposite effect. It was seized on by the media not only to call me a cheat but also the Pakistan bowlers. Not only did I have to suffer humiliation in the British press, in Pakistan also I was attacked for having betrayed my team.

It was the year I was frantically trying to raise money for a cancer hospital and the most depressing thing for me was that my fund-raising fell from 20 million rupees a month to two million a month. In trying to correct the situation, I gave a series of interviews about ball-tampering and that is what landed me in court.

In an interview with The Sun, I reiterated what I had written in the Telegraph the previous year, that pretty well everyone tampered with the ball in one way or the other, only the degrees varied from bowler to bowler.

It was this article that prompted Botham to sue me. Even though I had not mentioned his name, he felt that I had labelled him a cheat by saying all top bowlers in England and all over the world had tampered with the ball. I specifically said in the article that ball-tampering within limits was not cheating but he refused to accept my word.

As for the India Today article, where I was supposed to have called Botham and Lamb racist and lower class, there is little to say as I have always vehemently denied making those comments. At the time, I wrote to both men and stressed to them, and I stress again now, unreservedly, that I do not and have never considered them to be racist or lower class.

In reply to my letters, I received letters from their solicitors. I was more than willing to clear up any misunderstanding and even agreed to write an open letter in The Times.

FURTHERMORE, as both well knew before the trial started, I had a signed affidavit from the journalist who conducted the interview saying categorically that he remembered I had never called either of them racist or lower class. He had told me that during the process of editing, my words had been muddled. Unfortunately, this evidence could not be admitted in court as it came too late.

In reply to my letters, I received letters from their solicitors. I was more than willing to clear up any misunderstanding and even agreed to write an open letter in The Times. The saddest thing is that all the contents of that open letter were agreed on by Lamb and Botham and the whole matter could have come to an end in July 1994 with me paying their legal costs.

Unfortunately, negotiations came to a halt because of one line. Botham wanted me to write that I had never called him a cheat and that he had never interfered with the ball illegally. But the line he would not allow me to write was that neither had I called anyone else a cheat. Had I not included this last line in my open letter, I might have implied that while I had not called Botham a cheat, I had, however, called all the other top bowlers in the world cheats, which would clearly have left me open to more libel. Moreover, I had neither believed, intended or ever said that all ball-tampering was cheating.

I am afraid here it became a point of principle because I was, I felt, under the threat of a writ, being asked to say something I had never said. I knew at the time I stood to lose whatever I had left from my cricket earnings (most of which had been given to the hospital) and since I worked free for the charity, I have no source of income. The only reason I could take a stand on principle was an unshakeable faith in God.

I have read recent articles suggesting that the case was simply a battle of big egos. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It was purely a matter of principle.

How could I suddenly, under the threat of a writ, say all ball-tampering was cheating when for two years I had been saying almost exactly the opposite, that all tampering within limits was an accepted part of the game and not considered cheating?

I F one thing came out of this court case it was that highly respectable and big names in English cricket, like Geoffrey Boycott, Tony Lewis, Bob Taylor, Derek Pringle, Mike Atherton, David Gower and David Lloyd, were saying that ball-tampering within degrees had gone on in English cricket and was not necessarily cheating and that the laws were ambiguous and difficult to implement - something I have been saying ever since 1992 when the Pakistan bowlers were so unfairly being called cheats.

The awful thing is that 12 hours before we entered the court there was an offer by a third party to settle out of court and cover our costs. I was extremely happy about the offer and was only too willing to accept it. Unfortunately, Botham wanted an apology (for something I had never said) and damages and so tragically there was no other option left.

In the end, it was a pointless, needlessly stressful experience for everyone involved, especially the three wives. However, the verdict has filled me with admiration for British justice and especially for the fairness of the jury system whereby ordinary citizens have a God-given sense to be able to sift through the legal arguments and see the truth. I hope one day in Pakistan we, too, can have a jury system.