is this true? i couldn't believe this at first. but his own admission that he had tampered with the condition of the ball during a county match with a bottle top once prompts me to believe so.
“I have occasionally scratched the ball and lifted the seam. Only once did I use an object.Indeed, the most startling admission so far released concerns a county match between Sussex and Hampshire in 1991. 'The ball was not deviating at all,' Imran is quoted as saying. 'So I got the 12th man to bring on a bottle top and it started to move around a lot. I occasionally scratched the side (of the ball) and lifted the seam.'
Aamir Sohail : “Imran damaged Pakistan cricket by encouraging our bowlers to tamper with the ball. This has led to a culture where we can’t produce good new ball bowlers or quality openers.”
“After every lunch or tea interval the ball did crazy things,” recalled Ravi Shastri of an early tour to Pakistan. Once, after the final Indian wicket went down, the ball rolled down behind the wicket to the fine boundary and was picked up by veteran cricket journalist Rajan Bala. There seemed to be something sticky on the red cherry. When Bala asked Imran, his answer was combined acerbic wit and skilful evasion: “Must have been something the Indian batsmen left behind.”
When Imran took six for six from 23 deliveries, including a hat-trick, for Sussex against Warwickshire in 1983, umpire Don Oslear voiced his suspicions. Although Alvin Kallicharran, who saw the destruction from the non-striker’s end, deemed it the best bowling he had ever seen, others were not that effusive. England seamer Chris Old told the Daily Mirror, “I saw the ball [Imran] had tampered with, and it looked like a dog had chewed it.”
According to Oslear, “This was the first time I had seen one side of the ball scratched and torn with pieces of leather ripped out. The quarter seam had been opened up at a point where it meets the stitched seam and it appeared that some of the stitches had been cut. This allowed a triangle of leather to be pulled up from the surface of the ball, it was a piece large enough to be gripped between forefinger and thumb, and by which the ball could be suspended.”A report was sent to Lord’s.
Allan Lamb reported a relaxed exchange between Imran Khan and Robin Smith outside the wine bar at St John’s Wood before the start of the Lord’s Test against West Indies in 1991. Imran asked Smith, the Hampshire captain, how Aaqib was doing. According to Lamb: “Robin said, ‘Very well — he is doing a good job for us but has got warned on numerous occasions for tampering with the ball.’ Imran replied, ‘Yes, I’ve told him to be more discreet when he does it’”
Ian Botham said : i suggest that the best thing imran can do is just shut up because he has done enough damage to this game.
Mohinder Amarnath in an interview after the tour said that he once saw the Pakistani team take the ball with them to their dressing room during lunch. When he protested to the umpire, he was told quite rudely to keep quiet and bat.I have always wondered about what really was the difference between the two sides on that tour. The kind of movement Imran was getting on those tracks was, quite frankly, very hard to achieve without some sort of thing being done to the ball. Of course, this sort of thing is conjecture and nothing can be conclusively proved either way.My suspicion about the state of the ball on that tour was later again aroused when Imran admitted to using a bottle top in a sussex game in 1981 - ie the year before we toured Pakistan. He said that "the ball was doing absolutely nothing, so I had the 12th man bring out a bottle top and then it started moving all over the place" or something to this effect. If he was motivated enough to use such means in a game for sussex when the ball was
not doing much, it is hard to believe he would not use such means in a game against India.Imran was a great bowler, but I do think that his feats in that particular
series were achieved with some amount of help from factors other than just bowling skill. Indeed, his performance in that series still stands as a record (42 wickets IIRC).
Maninder singh :It was so blatant. Whenever the Pakistani team took the field after a break, the ball would start doing strange things. I also felt it was never the same ball used after each break. Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz would come out and make the ball talk; it used to move all over the place. The ball would cut back and hit the batsman in the midriff and chest. Everyone knows GR Viswanath was once out shouldering arms to a ball.
Imran Khan was genuinely quick and the “made up” ball only made things worse for us. After a while we stopped protesting. The reverse swing made them unplayable. The thing with reverse swing is it cuts back so late that batsmen find it very difficult to adjust to the pace.
Balwinder sandhu : By the way, according to me, they hold the copyright when it comes to ball-tampering. They are masters at it and they taught others," Sandhu told MiD DAY. During his debut series in Pakistan, 1982-83, Sandhu suspected something was being done to the ball by the Pakistani bowlers and fielders during drink intervals.
"Our doubts were confirmed when some of their players, who were dropped during the series told us that the ball was tampered with," said Sandhu.
John Reid, the New Zealand Cricket president, believes a lack of video evidence will not harm the allegations of ball-tampering against Pakistan...
..Reid said Imran Khan, who last week labelled Hair a "mini-Hitler", was one of the pioneers of tampering. "He wrote a book about it," he said. "Have a look at the book. There was a chapter in there saying how to do it. It's a joke, I'm afraid." ..
all these quotes from quite a handful of cricketers makes me firmly believe that he did it on several occasions and that too exceeding all the limits.hence i doubt his credentials as a top player of all time. your thoughts.
“I have occasionally scratched the ball and lifted the seam. Only once did I use an object.Indeed, the most startling admission so far released concerns a county match between Sussex and Hampshire in 1991. 'The ball was not deviating at all,' Imran is quoted as saying. 'So I got the 12th man to bring on a bottle top and it started to move around a lot. I occasionally scratched the side (of the ball) and lifted the seam.'
Aamir Sohail : “Imran damaged Pakistan cricket by encouraging our bowlers to tamper with the ball. This has led to a culture where we can’t produce good new ball bowlers or quality openers.”
“After every lunch or tea interval the ball did crazy things,” recalled Ravi Shastri of an early tour to Pakistan. Once, after the final Indian wicket went down, the ball rolled down behind the wicket to the fine boundary and was picked up by veteran cricket journalist Rajan Bala. There seemed to be something sticky on the red cherry. When Bala asked Imran, his answer was combined acerbic wit and skilful evasion: “Must have been something the Indian batsmen left behind.”
When Imran took six for six from 23 deliveries, including a hat-trick, for Sussex against Warwickshire in 1983, umpire Don Oslear voiced his suspicions. Although Alvin Kallicharran, who saw the destruction from the non-striker’s end, deemed it the best bowling he had ever seen, others were not that effusive. England seamer Chris Old told the Daily Mirror, “I saw the ball [Imran] had tampered with, and it looked like a dog had chewed it.”
According to Oslear, “This was the first time I had seen one side of the ball scratched and torn with pieces of leather ripped out. The quarter seam had been opened up at a point where it meets the stitched seam and it appeared that some of the stitches had been cut. This allowed a triangle of leather to be pulled up from the surface of the ball, it was a piece large enough to be gripped between forefinger and thumb, and by which the ball could be suspended.”A report was sent to Lord’s.
Allan Lamb reported a relaxed exchange between Imran Khan and Robin Smith outside the wine bar at St John’s Wood before the start of the Lord’s Test against West Indies in 1991. Imran asked Smith, the Hampshire captain, how Aaqib was doing. According to Lamb: “Robin said, ‘Very well — he is doing a good job for us but has got warned on numerous occasions for tampering with the ball.’ Imran replied, ‘Yes, I’ve told him to be more discreet when he does it’”
Ian Botham said : i suggest that the best thing imran can do is just shut up because he has done enough damage to this game.
Mohinder Amarnath in an interview after the tour said that he once saw the Pakistani team take the ball with them to their dressing room during lunch. When he protested to the umpire, he was told quite rudely to keep quiet and bat.I have always wondered about what really was the difference between the two sides on that tour. The kind of movement Imran was getting on those tracks was, quite frankly, very hard to achieve without some sort of thing being done to the ball. Of course, this sort of thing is conjecture and nothing can be conclusively proved either way.My suspicion about the state of the ball on that tour was later again aroused when Imran admitted to using a bottle top in a sussex game in 1981 - ie the year before we toured Pakistan. He said that "the ball was doing absolutely nothing, so I had the 12th man bring out a bottle top and then it started moving all over the place" or something to this effect. If he was motivated enough to use such means in a game for sussex when the ball was
not doing much, it is hard to believe he would not use such means in a game against India.Imran was a great bowler, but I do think that his feats in that particular
series were achieved with some amount of help from factors other than just bowling skill. Indeed, his performance in that series still stands as a record (42 wickets IIRC).
Maninder singh :It was so blatant. Whenever the Pakistani team took the field after a break, the ball would start doing strange things. I also felt it was never the same ball used after each break. Imran Khan and Sarfraz Nawaz would come out and make the ball talk; it used to move all over the place. The ball would cut back and hit the batsman in the midriff and chest. Everyone knows GR Viswanath was once out shouldering arms to a ball.
Imran Khan was genuinely quick and the “made up” ball only made things worse for us. After a while we stopped protesting. The reverse swing made them unplayable. The thing with reverse swing is it cuts back so late that batsmen find it very difficult to adjust to the pace.
Balwinder sandhu : By the way, according to me, they hold the copyright when it comes to ball-tampering. They are masters at it and they taught others," Sandhu told MiD DAY. During his debut series in Pakistan, 1982-83, Sandhu suspected something was being done to the ball by the Pakistani bowlers and fielders during drink intervals.
"Our doubts were confirmed when some of their players, who were dropped during the series told us that the ball was tampered with," said Sandhu.
John Reid, the New Zealand Cricket president, believes a lack of video evidence will not harm the allegations of ball-tampering against Pakistan...
..Reid said Imran Khan, who last week labelled Hair a "mini-Hitler", was one of the pioneers of tampering. "He wrote a book about it," he said. "Have a look at the book. There was a chapter in there saying how to do it. It's a joke, I'm afraid." ..
all these quotes from quite a handful of cricketers makes me firmly believe that he did it on several occasions and that too exceeding all the limits.hence i doubt his credentials as a top player of all time. your thoughts.