New Delhi, July 12: On a bright, sunny August '92 Sunday, the cat was threatening to jump out of the bag. Suspicious at the extent of late-reverse swing the Pakistanis - Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram and Aqib Javed - were generating in an ODI against England, the two umpires, Messrs Ken Palmer and John Hampshire were huddled together with third umpire Don Oslear in a committee room at Lord's during the lunch interval: "Let's get the bloody (tampered) ball replaced", they were unanimous in their stand. The Pakistanis were seething. Coach Intikhab Alam and skipper Javed Miandad, convinced of their players' integrity, agreed to the ball change but felt it was "only because the ball must have gone out of shape" and had not been tampered with. The match referee Derrick Murray too, towed the Pakistani line and opposed the umpires' stand of changing it, taking recourse to Law 42.5 (.no one should rub the ball on the ground or use any artificial substance or take any other action to alter the ball). Despite the English umpires' efforts and the subsequent court case, the cricket authorities tried their best to hush up the matter and the iceberg remained tightly sealed. For long, there were murmurs from international batsmen on how the Pakistani speedsters were "difficult to pick, especially with the old ball", and there would be tales of how they would tamper with the ball so that they could get it to reverse swing. But where was the proof, asked the International Cricket Council, and the Pakistanis laughed their way to the wickets bank.Another Sunday eight years later, this time in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, the TV guys were at work. They showed live two simultaneous frames - the upper portion showing Waqar's face oblivious to what his fingernails were doing on the other frame. Waqar was scratching the leather of the ball and this time, there won't be many takers for the Pakistani story. There are two ways of tampering with the ball. One, and the most commonly used, is lifting of the seam. This way the bowler can grip the ball better, not to talk about the movement and bounce he will get off the seam on pitching. Another is to shine (naturally or by using cream, gel etc) and moisten one side of the ball while the other side is roughened by use of external objects. You scratch or scuff the leather of the ball either by your fingernails or objects such as bottle caps. A ball can, thus, be `doctored' after around 25-30 overs or so. Over the last two decades players all over the world seem to have mastered this art and for the Pakistanis this has been like a child's play. Even a club-level bowler is said to be well versed with the reverse-swinging trade. The big and burly Sarfraz Nawaz was the pioneer of reverse swing and in the hands of Imran Khan this trade became lethal. Imran, with his pace, could make the ball do crazy things, as the Indians found out on their tour of Pakistan in '82-83. Imran picked up 40 wickets in the series, bewildering the Indian batsmen with his prodigious movement.It is not that only the Pakistanis have been either caught or warned for this `illegal' act. South Africans Chris Mathews and Shaun Pollock were asked to desist from such means in the '95 Kingsmead Test against England and there was a big furore over allegations made against the Sri Lankan bowlers around the same time in Australia. Like Waqar, the prying TV cameras also caught English skipper Michael Atherton taking his hand out of the pocket and rubbing some substance on the ball. As it transpired later, Atherton said he was "merely applying dirt on to the ball", apparently in an effort to make that side of the ball rough. Atherton was let off rather lightly. The Indians, notably Manoj Prabhakar, were also in the eye of the storm once. In their side game against the England Under-25 on their tour to that country in '90, the acting skipper Dilip Vengsarkar is said to have been talked to by the umpires and asked to "restrain bowlers". Still, apart from the New Zealander Chris Pringle, who admitted to having picked up the trick on their '91 tour to Pakistan and helping his team win a Test with to his 11-wicket match haul, not many bowlers have been able to achieve what the Pakistanis have been quite at home with. Imran, admitting that he had occasionally scratched and lifted the seam of the ball, once even using an external object (bottle cap) to scratch it, feels it needs skill to "use" the doctored ball. "To say that only tampering helps in reverse swing is nonsense. Not everybody can do it. Firstly, a bowler must be able to swing it anyway. Secondly, it takes a while to perfect the delivery as the ball is gripped and released differently." Former English skipper David Gower agrees. "It needs a high-quality fast bowler to use it properly."The Laws of Cricket too need a rethink, due to ambiguity. There is a striking anomaly in the Law 42.5, which says: "The replacement ball would have to be of inferior quality (to the ball which has to be replaced)". In some cases, that would be exactly what the bowler would want as an older and a more "doctored" ball could be made to swing more. Read what former umpire Oslear has to say: "All the balls that I have seen that have sustained illegal damage have made it virtually impossible when necessary to find one in a worse condition - unless a dog chewed it for a few weeks." Also, three umpires, a match referee and the all-seeing TV cameras can be difficult for bowlers to fool in international cricket these days. What about domestic cricket? Watching these matches in India can be more revealing than one can imagine. There are teams who "work" on the ball in a rampant manner. What does one do them? Simple, feels Gower. "I would support a liberalisation of the Law. Don't go all the way and allow bottle caps but a reversion of the pre-1980 change of law to allow rubbing the ball into the ground is more easily controllable by umpires." That would spell more trouble for batsmen around the world.
