'Pakistan has more fast bowlers than any other country'

Subash Jayaraman: Your father, Nazar Mohammad, was the first batsman to score a century for Pakistan. You followed in his footsteps to become an opening batsman. Were there expectations to choose and excel in cricket at a very young age?

Mudassar Nazar: I don't know whether there were expectations. Maybe the public expected it. My father was pretty mild about the whole thing. Although, when I look back, he did bring me up differently compared to the rest of the family. He must have seen my interest in the game at an early age. So I was given the freedom to play cricket at odd hours, while my two brothers didn't have that kind of free hand.

I never felt it was a burden. I was so madly in love with the game and madly in love with my dad that I just wanted to be like him. This is how the opening stuff came to me. The first ball of the day, the first ball of the innings. That came from following in my dad's steps. He had given up cricket well before I was born. It is just that I wanted to be like him.

SJ: I read an interview where you mentioned you knew you would play for Pakistan by the time you were ten years old.

MN: It is just that I was so passionate that nothing else mattered. I had to become a Test cricketer. It wasn't said in the context that I was so good that I was destined to be a Test cricketer. But there was never any doubt in my mind. I was never going to fall short of that. That was my whole ambition that I have to become a Test cricketer.

SJ: Your debut came against Australia in the 1976-77 series. You were facing [Dennis] Lillee and [Jeff] Thomson in Australia. You said that you didn't have the proper guidance to know what you should be doing to face these bowlers in Australia.

MN: I can talk about that because it's something I would never do to a youngster. We had been on the tour for well over three weeks and all I did was bowl in the nets. It was a historic tour because the youngsters that went on the tour played for Pakistan for a very long time. From the selectors' point of view, they had done their job.

On that tour, we had a lack of bowlers, so all we did was bowl. Never got to bat. We weren't lucky enough to be playing the earlier games as well. So it just meant there was no batting.

On the eve of the Test match, Sadiq [Mohammad], who was a formidable opening batsman, went to hospital to have his little finger x-rayed. When he came back, it was starting to get dark at the Adelaide Oval, where we were playing the match next day. He came and announced, "I can't play tomorrow because I have fractured my finger."

Mushtaq [Mohammad] and Imran [Khan] looked around and said, "Pad up and go and practise in the nets." They gave Saleem Altaf the new Kookaburra ball and said, "Go and bowl at Mudassar." Altaf took the new ball and bowled three balls at me that sailed well over my head. And he said, "Yes, that's enough." That was my whole preparation for the Test match. And I was in Australia for nearly a month for that.

The next day I was facing Lillee and Thomson. Before that I had seen Lillee a few times, a few clippings of him came through to Pakistan. I knew he was one hell of a great fast bowler and very, very quick. I had only heard of Jeff Thomson but I didn't know what was in store for me. Nobody told me how to face him and what to expect. But I was elated that I was going to become a Test player.

I went in and Majid [Khan] faced the first ball. Lillee came in. There used to be eight-ball overs in those days, and they were an eternity. Majid cut him for four in one of the balls and drove straight past mid-off and we ran four. Throughout that over I just felt as though Dennis Lillee was bowling with a tennis ball. It would pitch and sail over Majid, who was a very experienced batsman and very good at playing against pace bowling. He would just stay there and watch the ball sail into Rod Marsh's hands. Just like a tennis ball.

When I played my first ball in Test cricket, Jeff Thomson was bowling. I took the leg guard. When I stood up to survey the field, there was nobody in front of the stumps. Everyone was behind. All vacant area, acres of it. Just absolutely empty. Even the cover point was behind square. Short leg, who is normally in front, was also behind square. That was the kind of bounce he would generate - the ball would go behind the square. I can't say it was frightening because I didn't know what fright was in those days. I was 20. The first ball he bowled at me was at my throat, probably a loosener. I got a bat on it, the ball fell in front of me - there was nobody there and we ran one run. He got Majid out on the very next ball.

Every time I played and missed, I thought the ball was swinging a lot, and it was, because the ball was going past my nose. I had absolutely no idea until I looked over my left shoulder and saw my team-mates. They were doubled over in laughter. "Who is this youngster going on the front foot to probably the fastest bowler ever?"

But I survived an hour and a half. Gary Gilmour replaced Dennis Lillee and bowled this ball, at a much less pace. I went for an expansive drive and got out caught-behind. I had been there for an hour. In the second innings, me and Majid put on 60-odd runs. I went out to the legspin of Kerry O'Keeffe, which was a disappointment.

That was my baptism. I felt good, but I wasn't good enough to stay in the team, because Sajid Mohammad was the main opening batsman. He came back and scored a century in Melbourne. So I had to wait longer.

SJ: But you did go on to score ten Test hundreds. A lot of them came against your favourite opposition, India. Was there any additional motivation when facing them? Or was it the kind of bowling you felt comfortable against?

MN: I was a front-foot player and used to batting in subcontinental conditions. India had a great bowler in Kapil Dev. Many of my successes and failures have come against him. Somehow, if you have a long career, you will always have a favourite team. But there is no doubt in my mind I wasn't as technically equipped away from home as I was at home.

SJ: You have carried your bat through the innings like your father. You scored the slowest Test hundred, and had some large partnerships, including that 451 with [Javed] Miandad. What does it take to play such long innings again and again?

MN: We were lucky that when we were brought up there was a lot of school cricket and college cricket. We used to play three-day matches. That gave us the time to build an innings and stay at the crease for a long time. I see a lot of batsmen reaching their 50 and start getting cramps, which is rubbish. In order to play long innings, you need to be fitter.

SJ: Batting is about partnerships. That is how you score runs. What was it like for you?

MN: You complement each other. When I played first-class cricket for PIA [Pakistan International Airlines], I used to bat with Majid, who would go at the same pace as the rest of the fast-scoring players. I was more sedate. But he made life easy for me. He would attack the bowlers and all of a sudden the field would open up and the bowler will worry about the line and length, trying to stop the run flow.

It is a lot about having confidence in your own ability. You need to understand your own game. You need to understand the need of the team as well. Both will start going for the runs if we are both good at it. But you don't always get that. There will always be a player who is more sedate, who goes along the pitch, which is also helpful for the team.

It wasn't the runs Majid scored, the pace he scored them at, but his composure that I admired from the other end. He never worried about getting out.

SJ: Who is the best batsman, Pakistani or otherwise, that you really admired and enjoyed watching?

MN: Oh, very easy answer. I have not found anyone better than Sunil Gavaskar. He was my hero, even though we would find it very hard to dismiss him, especially during the early days. I was an aggressive young man who wanted to unsettle him. His composure, the time he had, and the amount of big scores he used to get - his concentration would be unflinching. He was a nightmare, yet delightful to play against.

The greatest batting I witnessed against spin was his last innings, in Bangalore against Pakistan in 1987. And he played in the era where you had Greg Chappell and Viv Richards, Javed Miandad and Allan Border. Yet none had a better record against West Indies, who were so dominant.

Imran Khan always gets my admiration because there were a lot of allrounders. On their day, they would outdo each other. But against the best in the world, Imran would stand firm and pick up wickets and score runs, and every now and then win matches against them.

SJ: You had the happy knack of taking wickets, breaking crucial partnerships, both in Tests and ODIs. Did you consider yourself a batsman or more of an allrounder?

MN: As a batsman who bowled, and who was pretty confident when he came on to bowl. I was watching some highlights one day and Ted Dexter on commentary said about me: "He looks all right, not that great. But look at the length he is bowling. He bowls at a length that the batsmen don't like. He is always asking questions."

That is what my bowling was all about. Because I played against all of them in league cricket in England, I knew all the batsmen I bowled against. I knew where to bowl to them. There was a role that I had to play. I knew that when I come on to bowl I have to bowl five, six or seven overs, so that bowlers like Imran, Sarfaraz [Nawaz] and Wasim [Akram] could get some rest. Often I needed to pick up wickets. Many times, when I broke a partnership, I really didn't get the next over because there were better bowlers.

SJ: You played your last Test match when you were 33. You must have felt that you still had a lot to offer to Pakistan.

MN: Yes. I was living in England. My son was five and had started school. He couldn't come on tour. Also, I couldn't go back to Pakistan and play four-day games. If you didn't play four-day games, you couldn't play in the Tests. In the last two years, my Test cricket suffered because of that.

More crucially, I had to take on the Pakistan Cricket Board. Unfortunately I was the guy who was pushed to negotiate the contracts. That put me in a very precarious situation with the board. I remember not retiring but just staying in England and saying, "I am not going home."

SJ: You have been the coach of Pakistan, been with the academy, with Kenya, and now with the Global Academy in Dubai. How do you go about handling the big-name players?

MN: Different players have different temperaments. The coach has to be brave and very good at man management. You think the likes of Alex Ferguson didn't have a problem at Manchester United? I remember Steve Bruce asking Alex Ferguson, "You ask us to be on time, and not wear certain things to training, but you allow Eric Cantona to do what he wants and he turn ups for training in jeans. How could you allow that?" To which Ferguson said, "Steve, if you can do what he can do with a football, with your feet, I will let you do the same thing."

There are times when the likes of Sarfraz [Nawaz] or Shoaib Akhtar or Inzamam-ul-Haq are in your team, players who don't toe the line or are not energetic. It becomes a challenge. You can overcome that challenge. But when the board management is not strong enough, or the media is too intrusive - which it is in the case of Pakistan, it is very difficult - as a coach, you are always looking over the shoulder. One bad result and you are out.

SJ: The Pakistani team in the 1970s, '80s, '90s and even in the 2000s was just filled with great players. But the talent pipeline seems to be drying up. I am assuming the lack of international cricket must be another stumbling block in attracting newer talent to take up cricket in Pakistan. What do you think can be done to overcome that geopolitical reality within Pakistan?

MN: There is no running away from the fact that international cricket not happening in Pakistan has a bad effect on the whole thing. What happened in the apartheid era in South Africa? They stopped playing, they stopped getting sponsorship. But they kept sustaining their cricket, they kept running the development programmes in their country, and there were players who went to several countries playing league cricket. Unfortunately Pakistan is a poor country. And some of the hierarchy in Pakistan has never been benevolent to the development of the game. They think if you just look after the Pakistan national team, that is fine. That is just rubbish. You have to keep your first-class cricket cycle and keep improving it.

Pakistan has more fast bowlers than any other country in the world. Pakistan is blessed with fast bowlers, and yet people say that we are not getting anyone who bowls quick. Yes, we don't have anyone bowling at 155-160kph. We have got bowlers who can bowl in excess of 140kph and there are more than ten of them. Nobody has that. There are left-armers, right-armers, and they have all got different actions. All we need to do is to work on them and get them into the system and get them to the academies. That is what Pakistan needs to do.

We keep saying that domestic cricket in Pakistan is not good, and I think we have valid reasons for saying that. All the more reason why we should be getting all these budding youngsters into the academies and then take them on tour. If nobody is in favour of coming to Pakistan, we might as well take them out. The last time the A team went on an international tour was when I was in charge of the team. That was six or seven years ago. We have lost a generation of players. How do we cover up for that? Fortunately - I am saying fortunately because I have seen the Pakistan A team and I keep close tabs on the Under-19 team - there is a pool that you can work with. You can carry on working with U-16 players.

SJ: There is a question from a listener: Which is the better Pakistani XI? The one that played in the 1970s and '80s or the one that played in the 1990s and the 2000s?

MN: The '90s Pakistan - when Imran left, I had left before that, Javed was still around - that was the best team Pakistan ever had. They had batting, bowling - sheer talent. They were on such a strong footing. But unfortunately, match-fixing started and they became afraid of losing because they thought, "If we lose, they are going to blame us for match-fixing."

The Pakistan team of the 1990s was as talented as the Australian team. I don't care if you had Shane Warne, Glenn McGrath, the Waugh brothers, Mark Taylor and David Boon. Pakistan were as good as that. But it is just that the fear of losing cost them.

Even today, you ask anybody - who would you not want to be facing when you go to bat? And the universal answer is: Wasim Akram. If you have Wasim, Waqar Younis, Mushtaq Ahmed, Saqlain Mushtaq, Shoaib, Azhar Mahmood and Abdul Razzak, how can you lose a game?

In the '70s and '80s, we just had Imran. He would be helped by Sarfraz and Abdul Qadir, and then Wasim came along. And then when Imran started to decline, Waqar turned up. We didn't have a full team. We used to have four or five top players and the rest of us would just make up the numbers.

SJ: Could you talk a bit about your role with the ICC's Global Cricket Academy?

MN: My role at the moment is as head of development. The idea was, the ICC would look after the elite players of the world. But because of the economic meltdown, the project didn't finish. By the time they finished the academies and started work and we opened up as ICC's Global Cricket Academy, the ICC High Performance Programme had moved in a different direction and we were supposed to look after that part of the ICC programme. We are going run a four-nation programme at the academy. We run independent school programmes, we run independent academy programmes where the expat kids come and play cricket. There are about 700 kids, starting from three-year-olds.

Recently we signed a contract with UAE Cricket. We are going to look after the national team and hopefully the national U-19 team and the grassroots cricket.