WARESPEDIA

SOURCE: CRICINFO.COM

How serious are the allegations?
Yawar Saeed Allegations are only one thing. They are all serious - small or big. There is nothing that I can say about them as far as these allegations are concerned.

What was the feeling in the Pakistan dressing room coming into today's game with all these allegations going on?
Saeed Obviously we are not delighted about it. We are sad. It was a very sober feeling the dressing room.

Salman, are these allegations true? The evidence looks pretty damning in the paper this morning
Saeed No allegations are true till they proved either way. So at this point of time they are just allegations.

Salman, are you going to resign as Test captain in the wake of these allegations?
Salman Butt Why? Pakistan won a Test match against Australia after 15 years and against England after nine years, so does that make me resign from this current situation?

But what about after the serious allegations?
Saeed I don't think you should ask [him] to resign [based] on allegations. Let us wait till the case is completed.

The team surrendered quite meekly this morning as wickets fell quickly. Was that because of what happened in the morning and was that playing on their minds?
Butt We didn't play good cricket. England played a lot better cricket in this game. The point is you can't connect what happened in the morning's display because even yesterday the team collapsed for 74 runs. So today was a bit better than that. The guys tried their best but it was just England's game. They played the better game.

Yawar, did you ask Salman if the allegations are true. And in view of these allegations will the ODI series take place?
Saeed As far as I'm concerned the one-day series is on. We are moving to the West Country after [Tuesday] and will play the one-dayers and the T20s. As far as the allegations are concerned I would still call them allegations, as it is not really for me within 24 hours to pass a judgment whether they are true or not.

Why can't Salman say whether are the allegations are true or not?
Butt These are just allegations and anybody can stand out and say anything, it doesn't mean they are true. They include quite a few people and they are still ongoing. We'll see what happens.

The allegations involving you - are they true or false?
Butt I haven't heard any allegation except someone just taking my name. There is nothing that I've seen or shown on TV, nothing that involves me.

Yawar, have you spoken to the PCB today? Have they asked you for a report?
Saeed As a manager whether they ask or not I will give my report. I have not been speaking to them today because we came to the ground. Now the Test match is over. The series is over. Now I shall certainly talk to them.

And how quickly have they asked you for a report?
Saeed The chairman of PCB is in town. I will be seeing him his afternoon and giving him my report.

Salman, can you reassure the Pakistan fans that you have given 100% effort at every moment in this Test series?
Butt Definitely we have given our best that we could do on the days. We've tried our best. It has just been the conditions have been difficult for the batsmen. Remember that this has been a very inexperienced team, especially the batting which has been the main thing has not matched expectations. We all expected that [to happen] as I've been saying in all my press conferences, that the guys are young with the least experience, and in these difficult conditions they might struggle.

Did the bowlers give 100% every ball of this Test series?
Butt I will say every person in my team has given his 100% and has given all the efforts he could, but not every time you go out do you achieve what you want to. All you can do is try, and the rest is beyond your control.

You seem tired and weary and seem to have had a sleepless night?
Butt Obviously when some allegations are thrown at you, how can you have satisfaction? Because it is an allegation levelled against you, so unless and until it becomes clear in black and white, until then it is never easy.

Mohammad Amir, just 18, won the Man-of-the-Series award for Pakistan. Is he upset by the allegations?
Saeed Mohammad Amir is a bowler who has done well so far in his career all over the world. Certainly he is a little disappointed because his name has come through but we and he will wait until the investigations are over. If he comes through clean there is nothing better than that.

If he doesn't come through clean, what then?
Saeed Then let's wait until that time comes.

Why did the Pakistanis not come out to practise in the morning?
Saeed It is a good question. We did not have even a cup of coffee in the morning. But we did not warm up because I was talking to the team. A lot had happened overnight and it was my duty to talk to them, get them focussed back into the match. There is no other reason.

The newspaper report that makes these allegations describes you as the ring leader. Can you confirm that? Also can you confirm whether or not the police searched your room?
Saeed I have read it too in the press. As far as the Scotland Yard investigations are concerned I would not like to say anything more until we go along with it because it is not right for us to make the allegations. As for the room search, I said this last night, too, the Scotland Yard officers came. They interviewed, they came to my room as well. They went to his [Butt's] room and two other rooms and they were there for about two to three hours. After that I asked if there is anything we can do, they said no. "We are doing our investigations," they said. "There is nothing more for you people to do".

They were matched, yet mismatched; cozy allies, yet bitter rivals; bound by a common vision and purpose, yet also pushed apart by their backgrounds and polarised temperaments. At some point during their contemporaneous careers for Pakistan, Imran Khan and Javed Miandad grasped the prisoner's dilemma that circumstances had thrust upon them. Somehow they saw through the fog of bitterness and understood that they were better off collaborating than fighting. In the process, enough magic was unleashed to launch a golden age.

They say momentous eras are appreciated only in retrospect, but in this case, even at the time, most people were on to the fact. A landmark ODI victory in Sharjah, inaugural Test series wins in India and England, a contest for the ages on West Indian soil, and - the cherry on the cake - the World Cup in 1992. Pakistan had never come upon such riches before and haven't since.

Imran was born in 1952, Miandad in 1957. Their international debuts were four years apart, yet their rise to international fame was separated only by months. In 1976-77, Pakistan's great watershed season, Miandad made 504 runs from three Tests against New Zealand at 126, and Imran took 12 wickets in Sydney in Pakistan's first Test win in Australia. Team photographs from that period show these two standing at the edges with bemused, innocent expressions. They appear to have no awareness of the historic accomplishments that are to be their fate.

From these spectacular starts, they prospered and went from strength to strength, evolving a relationship that, to paraphrase Imran's biographer Christopher Sandford, was to be the making of modern Pakistani cricket. Despite this vital collaboration, it is no secret that these two did not quite see eye to eye. Even today it is difficult to extract praise from one for the other without a touch of grudge.

Much has been made of the Lahore-Karachi rivalry as the basis for the tensions between Imran and Miandad, but it probably had more to do with the taboo subject of social class. Both were burdened by it in their own way - one by having less, the other by having more. Approaching each other warily, they communicated the natural reactions of their ilk, and the resentments built up. Class may be a sensitive and uncomfortable topic, but it is one to which cricket - a sport that once distinguished between gentlemen and players - is hardly alien.

The slights Miandad perceived are specific, while Imran's are vague. In 1982, Imran declared on a featherbed pitch when Miandad was 280 not out and looked good for 400; this still gets Miandad seething. Imran was also the lynchpin in the rebellion against Miandad's initial spell of captaincy in 1981; this also continues to rankle. On the other hand, Imran's gripes are more about Miandad's scheming, penchant for confrontation, and capacity for political intrigue.

There wasn't a eureka moment, but sometime in the mid-1980s a penetrating hunger for team success forced them both to put their visceral feelings aside. Strip Imran of his cricket and he would still be accepted into Pakistan's most rarefied postcolonial enclaves; strip Miandad of his cricket and questions would be asked. The mutual genius of the two was to invert the premise of this hypothetical: instead of eliminating cricket attributes from their assessment of each other, they eliminated class attributes. Miandad still remains Pakistan's best batsman, and Imran Pakistan's best cricketer. This was the stark realisation.

Arguably, Miandad conceded more. Forced to make way for Imran, he was stripped of the captaincy and left friendless. He could have squandered his promise and burned out with anger and paranoia, yet he pulled himself together to faithfully serve as Imran's primary tactical advisor and Pakistan's batting mainstay. His family and friends helped, but the single biggest factor behind this turnaround was that Imran succeeded in earning his respect. The general view of Miandad conjuring up tactics and Imran barking the commands and motivating the troops is largely correct. There have been matches - the Bangalore Test from 1987 is perhaps the best example - when they were practically co-captains. By the late 1980s these two were essentially a team within the team.

Anecdotes are aplenty on this subject. A perennial favourite dates to Pakistan's round-robin match against South Africa in the World Cup of 1992. After a heartbreaking defeat in which Pakistan found themselves on the wrong side of the rain-interruption rule, Imran thundered into the pavilion and flung his bat across the dressing room. The rest of the team made itself scarce.

Photojournalist Iqbal Munir decided this was the moment to take a picture and stepped forward, but Wasim Akram stopped him. "Where do you think you're going?" said Akram. "The only person who can approach Imran right now is Javed." Sure enough, within minutes Miandad was at Imran's side, pacifying, counselling, cajoling.

The one blemish in Pakistan's otherwise idyllic era had been a heartbreaking loss in the 1987 World Cup semi-final in Lahore, where Imran and Miandad were separated during a crucial partnership. But it turned out to be a necessary setback that would prepare them for the ultimate finale. Five years later they found themselves in a World Cup final in Melbourne, and Miandad was walking out to join Imran at 24 for 2. Imran by this time was in the twilight of his career and Miandad nearly so. Pakistan being Pakistan, another wicket meant certain collapse. Miandad notes in his autobiography that they barely uttered a word to each other during what became a 139-run title-winning partnership. After all those years and all those ups and downs, there was no longer any need for it.

Today, Imran may be a marginalised politician and Miandad a marginalised cricket administrator, but in statistical archives, in history books, and indeed in the hearts and minds of the cricket-following public, they sit at the two ends of Pakistan cricket's table of grandmasters. Every now and then they can still be seen delivering some opinionated critique on television. It isn't quite the same as watching them play, but it's not a bad substitute. The style, vigour, wit and - most charmingly - deadpan disdain, are all there.

Recently, during an ODI in Dubai, television cameras captured the two watching the action, seated next to each other on plush sofas, absorbed in conversation. Imran, sporting dark glasses, appeared regal, declarative and forthright; Miandad appeared dismissive, cutting and often incredulous. Perhaps in deference to the die-hard, they seemed to be enacting the same old roles that had made them legends.