The googly men from Pakistan

It was just past noon at Lahore, and England looked determined to draw the third Test. The air was full of sloth; the sun was out and the crowd, with lunch settling in their bellies, must have been thinking of an afternoon siesta. Danish Kaneria, who had operated from round the wicket before lunch, came over and struck twice removing Paul Collingwood and Kevin Pietersen. Enter the Ashes hero, Andrew Flintoff, who had tackled Shane Warne with aplomb, and a Pakistani victory still looked a remote English collapse or two away.

Kaneria ripped the red cherry across; it whirred, looped, dipped and pitched on middle-and-off stump, down came the bat in an arc, covering for the leg break. But Flintoff had not accounted for one final element of deception. The ball broke back in instead of leaving him, missed the swing of the bat, threaded the bat-pad gap and disturbed the furniture. The 'Bosie', invented by Bernard Bosanquet, an Englishman, a century ago had dealt the fatal blow to England just as it had, in the first Test at Multan, when Kaneria removed Shaun Udal with a beautiful googly.

It's only apt that the wrong 'un is being put to potent use by a Pakistani. Cricket owes the revival of this deadly weapon to Abdul Qadir. The art was dying after Subhash Gupte had weaved his magic in the '50s and although there was Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, the fastish spinner, one couldn't really classify him as a dedicated practitioner of the googly. It was Qadir who breathed fresh life into it, fingers licking his tongue, a blur of whirring arms at the end of which the red cherry would pop out, its destination still unknown to the batsmen. With Qadir, legspin and variations like the googly were like courting a woman. The affair was consummated spectacularly against the English at Lahore in 1987-88 when Qadir first cleaned up Graham Gooch with a perfect googly and went on to bamboozle the rest of the batsmen on his way to a dramatic 9 for 56 .

It's interesting to note that in the Edwardian days of Bosanquet, the googly was deemed as cheating and even the leading batsmen of that era, like Arthur Shrewsbury, wanted it banned. Bosanquet had quipped, 'Not unfair chaps, just immoral'. And years later, in the days of Qadir, it was treated as subcontinental wizadry. For the English, Qadir was an exotic oriental mystery and their media spun out exotic visions with the magic and wizardry likened to witchcraft. The curious oriental was back in the public imagination, and the fact that Qadir was a preacher's son added to the charm.

An English writer once described his visage thus: "He has the right face, too, one of calculation and conspiracy. The eyes narrow ominously and the fringe of dark beard hints at brigandage and plunder, not at all like the straightforward yeoman-growth of Gatting. You could imagine that face emerging from the mystic gloom of a Karachi bazaar to whisper dread tidings of deceit in high places and intrigue in the back streets." Not even his name was spared. "... and the name Abdul is somehow appropriate, hinting at the mystery and magic that is about to be worked on some poor plodding Englishman at the crease."

But that's beyond the boundary; on it encouraged by his astute captain, Imran Khan, Qadir played on the English psyche. He cloaked further mystery around himself by spurning offers to play for the counties, and unleashed his magic only in international games. Even his unique strange action was a put-on, the creation of a clever man who lived up to his oriental image to exploit the doubt-ridden minds of occidental batsmen. He even started sporting a beard, to add further mystique.

Qadir had two types of googlies, one from the back of the hand and the other finger-spun with the conventional legbreak action. He would rip it from close to the stumps, away from it, behind the crease, and even droop his shoulders to get a different angle.

After Qadir, the baton passed onto Laxman Sivaramakrishnan who, however, faded away after a promising start. Mushtaq Ahmed, the chubby pakistani who modelled his action on Qadir, came next. His finest moment under the sun came at the World Cup final at Melbourne, when he foxed Graeme Hick with a gorgeous googly, trapping him right in front. However, Mushtaq was slower through the air and the batsmen, even if initially deceived, could go back and play it off the pitch. But like Qadir, he continues to haunt the English, albeit playing in county cricket. In 2003, he became the first bowler in five years to take 100 wickets in the English season as he lifted Sussex to the first Championship title in their history.

And now, Kaneria's wrists power the googly - he even had the courage to unleash it in his very first ball in Test cricket. And going by events in the recent series against England, the wonderfully deceptive art is alive and well with him. It would probably take sociologists to figure out the reason why Hyderabad has produced wristy batsmen like Mohammad Azharuddin and VVS Laxman, while Pakistan seems to churn out bowlers who can reverse swing and legspinners who can twist their wrists to produce a well-concealed googly. But before one gets carried away by oriental imagery, let's not forget that it was an Englishman who invented this intriguing weapon, and a quartet of South Africans- Reggie Schwarz, Ernie Vogler, Aubrey Faulkner and Gordon White - who tamed it. The fact that England were haunted by Bosanquet's invention exactly hundred years after he played his last Test for them, in the Leeds Test against Australia in 1905, adds a fine twist to the googly's fascinating tale.