I saw an article recently in some Indian newspaper where John Holder claimed that while umpiring in the '89 Pakistan/India series he saw both teams, and Imran, Wasim, Kapil and Prabhakar in particular, quite openly scratching scratching the ball. Also England at the Oval in '91, the season after which he was dropped from the international panel.
Yes.... I know about that incident where umpire Holder accused the Indians of that.More over this
statement of Holder, though is enough to doubt even a legendary player like Kapil do not have enough in it to prove the repeated offense of Indian
players w.r.t tampering.
Would elaborate reasons from Kapil's point of view.First of all we need to go thru this link.
https://books.google.co.in/books?id...63aAhVJqo8KHXvfBkgQ6AEIMDAB#v=onepage&q=kapil dev if i tampered with ball i could have got 500 wkts&f=false
In the 83 PAK series most of the Indian players speculated that some thing was being done to the ball by the Pakistanis.Naturally it can be
assumed in all probablity that Indians knew nothing about tampering that time.Soon in 83 itself Kapil played in the series vs WI in India. After
that he had his knee surgery.Till that point Kapil's record read at 62 tests,247 wkts @27.72 avg:. Balwinder Sandhu who has played a lot with Kapil
dev (even in the 83 WI series in India and also in that 83 PAK series) has stated with utmost assurance and sincerity that he never would place
Imran over Kapil because of tampering and that Kapil was a clean cricketer.Sandhu being such closely associated with these players and events would
know much better than we people, isn't it???So it's sure that Kapil took 247 wkts in 62 tests at a very good avg: of 27.72 with out any tampering.
After that his knee injury and subsequent surgery came.He didn't take adequate rest after surgery.The result was that in his next 30 tests
he could only pick 72 wkts @ 36.25.And more importantly an avg: of 40.26 in 19 tests at home during this period.If he tampered with the ball his
figures would certainly have been much better isn't it???
Then in the next 2 series in WI and 'NZL at home' respectively Kapil was at his very best.Here too there is nothing to suggest that ball
tampering took place because in WI Kapil had always been brilliant like 'duck into water' and against NZL he could feed of brilliant performance of
2 spin bowlers Ayub & Hirwani.
After that the 89 series in PAK happend.As umpire Holder points out tampering would have happend mostly with malicious Prabhakar at the lead,
keeping in mind as to what happend in that 83 series in PAK .But from all the things mentioned till now , we can assume Kapil to be innocent in this
saga despite surely being aware about what was going around him.The scenario would have been that he minded his own business of not indulging in any
malpractice but being well aware that some other members related with the team did some thing related to tampering with 83 series in mind. Yes
umpire Holder has pointed out Kapil's name too.But we need to evaluate things based on what happend in the latest Cameron Bancroft incident.Even
with the aid of 30 or so cameras and such big screens and all ,the field umpires couldn't identify as to what was going on and to be more precise
as to who was the person behind tampering. It took around 1.30 hrs effort of cameras to identify that Bancroft was the culprit, who actually was
going the dirty work.If this is the case in these much highly technologically advanced days, how could a middle aged umpire with out any technical
assistance trace out exactly as to who exactly was tampering the ball among 11 players spread distances apart in a vast ground???Naturally when
ever the ball would have passed on to him, umpire Holder could have realized that ball was being tampered with.But to think that he knew exactly the
culprit behind the tampering is big folly.Naturally he named the 2 main bowlers in the Indian camp and also Pak camp.One thing which can be agreed
upon is that all the bowlers would benefit from a tampered ball even if tampering is only done by a single player. But it is naive to think that
Kapil got any benefit when oppostion score happend to be 699/5 in the lone inns in the concerned Lahore match.
Malicious Prabhakar played 39 tests in total and avg:ed a paltry 37.3. 1st test in 89 PAK tour was only his 2nd test match.So at the worst case,
even if Prabhakar tampered with the ball in all matches he played in , there is nothing to suggest that he knew even the basics of proper tampering,
keeping in mind a mere ordinary trundler Chris Pringle could pick 11 wickets in his first tampering attempt that too on flat Pakistan pitch.
Other wise how he could avg: only 37.3??? That means ,even if other bowlers too would involuntarily benefit by ball tempering in normal cases , in
Prabhakar's case that would be practically nil.
So all in all ,it can be safely assumed that 89 PAK tour has been the only instance of occurance of tampering in Kapil's career where he was
not at all the culprit.