Went thru the links. These statements of Holder & More , though is enough to doubt even Kapil , do not have enough in it to prove the REPEATED OFFENSE of Indian players w.r.t tampering.
Voices of celebrities and politicians.
www.indiatoday.in
In the above links , Kapil is seen convincingly making it clear that he didn't resort to tampering and that he would have got more than 500 wkts if he resorted to tampering.I personally still remembers him years back appearing in a prominent TV channel and echoing the same statement with utmost assurance.
The decades old relationship of enmity & animosity between the 2 nations was at its extreme during this period.Keeping in mind as to what happend in that 83 series in PAK , Indian team management too would have decided to take any extreme steps if required.As umpire Holder & More points out, tampering would have happend mostly with Prabhakar at the lead, . But from Kapil's own admission , 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 of 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 behind doing 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.
Similarly Kiran More was only a relatively junior member of 3 years old in the team coming into this 89 PAK series.It can be rightly assumed that
he too could sense ball tampering taking place with out knowing as to who actually were involved in putting that into practice.
One thing which can be agreed upon is that all the bowlers would benefit from a tampered ball even if tampering is done by even a single player only. But it is naive to think that Kapil got any benefit when opposition score happend to be 699/5 in the lone inns in the Lahore test match(John Holder's test match).In other 3 test matches of the series , he could have got a bit of a benefit .
Testimonies w,r,t Imran's tampering:
Imran never considered ball-tampering as cheating. To him, it was accepted as part of cricket.
scroll.in
www.thehindu.com
Former Pakistan captain Rameez Raja has said that ball-tampering is the Pakistan team’s ‘standard operating procedure’ (SOP).
www.dnaindia.com
Image courtesy of: The Daily Messenger Sohail blamed Khan for “encouraging” bowlers to engage in ball-tampering Former Pakistan all-rounder turned politician Imran Khan is to blame for all of Pakistan’s current failures, according to ex-skipper Aamir Sohail. Sohail even pointed the finger at...
battingwithbimal.com
Abdul Qadir, the legendary Pakistan legspinner, was axed by Pakistan Television (PTV) for claiming that the success of Pakistan's fast bowlers, both past and present, was attributed to tampering with the ball
www.espncricinfo.com
Aamer Sohail’s charges against Imran Khan have come as a surprise attack from within, but this is hardly the first such allegation against the legendary all-rounder. Arunabha Sengupta traces the numerous associations of Imran and his disciples with the murky art of ball tampering.
www.cricketcountry.com
Arun Lal mentioned the qualities of Imran which makes him a suited leader of Pakistan cricket.
circleofcricket.com
Balwinder Sandhu was Kapil Dev’s new-ball partner for India for a couple of years. He was also a member of the World Cup-winning squad, perhaps the most iconic moment of his career being hoodwinking Gordon Greenidge to shoulder arms to an incoming delivery to clean bowl him.
www.cricketcountry.com
Tim Paine will lead Australia in the final Test at Johannesburg.
circleofcricket.com
https://www.dawn.com/news/1472410 //john bass
LAHORE - Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif said that those people who are hindering the process of national development could not be sincere to the nation.
www.nation.com.pk
"Despite having 100pc support of the institutions, the inept government of Imran Khan failed to deliver," he says.
www.dawn.com
John Reid, the New Zealand Cricket president, believes a lack of video evidence will not harm the allegations of ball-tampering against Pakistan
www.espncricinfo.com
Reacting to Imran Khan's confession on ball-tampering in tis forthcoming authorized biography. former Indian Test cricketers interviewed by The Statesman have expressed surprise at the statement. Some tire of the opinion that it was good that he finally admitted it, while others feel that it’s ¢...
sikhheritageeducation.com
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cricket/we-did-doctor-the-ball-sarfraz/articleshow/616951.cms
// sadiq mohamed
Game related personalities giving testimonies as per the above links: Imran himself, Shoaib Akhtar, Rameez Raja, Aamer Sohail ,Abdul Qadir, Sarfraz Nawaz, Mudassar Nazar,Younis Ahmed,Sadiq Mohammed,Shahbaz Shereef,Don Oslear,Chris Old, Ian Taylor,Allan Lamb,Robin Smith ,Ian Botham, John Reid,John Bass ,Arun Lal, Balwinder Sandhu, Ravi Sastri , Kapil Dev, Maninder Singh, Mohinder Amarnath,Chetan Chauhan, Kirti Azad and a few more ....
Some of the few anecdotes which are having either missing links or very difficult to trace out from the above links are as follows:
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.
A few months back , I came across a youtube link in which one Afghan minister is quoting in the lines 'Imran should remember that Afghanistan is not a cricket ball to be tampered with' .' John Bass ' among those names I quoted is a US national. Naturally when even a US national is accusing Imran Khan, then the massiveness of the credentials w.r.t these allegations can only be imagined .All these quotes from quite a handful of cricketers and other prominent personalities makes me firmly believe that Imran did it on several occasions and that too exceeding all the limits.
Statistical evidences:
Imran's career phases
stats.espncricinfo.com
stats.espncricinfo.com
A bowler who was averaging 32.51 during the first 8 years of his career suddenly starts averaging in the digits so much so that in the next phase he averages a paltry 19.45 .Even more strange is the home average of mere 16.8 in this 2nd phase. It is really rare to come across such peculiar flow of averages for any quality bowler in the history of the game.
Kapil's career phases.
In the 83 PAK series most of the Indian players speculated that some thing was being done to the ball by the Pakistanis( from another link & Sandhu's words above confirms it).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.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 moving forward , 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 come he could avg: only 37.3??? That means ,even if other bowlers too would involuntarily benefit from ball tampering in normal cases , in Prabhakar's case that would be practically nil.That inturn means Prabhakar never indulged in tampering after that 89 PAK series. If he did, he would have averaged much better in his career.
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.
To conclude, I am only stating a few anecdotes.My conclusion is that Imran was a chronic ball tamperor who doesn't deserve the 'greatness' which his 'stats' calls for.Again each to their own .
