Rashid Khan, the wrong-foot bowler, now teaches Chinese cricketers the right way to play the sport © ACC

The thing about Pakistan is that great cricketers can be found anywhere, you just have to have an eye. Their former players don't have any airs about them. So if you haven't seen them before, there is a chance you may not know that roaming amongst us, chatting, looking after things, are some of the interesting characters of the game. One such player is Rashid Khan - the original wrong-foot bowler from Asia. He actually bowled off the wrong foot, as opposed to Sohail Tanvir, who gives an optical illusion to that effect. Rashid got Viv Richards out for a duck in his debut ODI, and puts it down to being wrong-footed. That should be incentive enough for a host of youngsters to put their wrong foot out.

What was Rashid's incentive, though? "Nothing, I never realised for a long time. I used to think my action was very good.

"And in those days, around 1976, very few matches were shown on TV. When I went to watch a match between Pakistan and Australia, we saw Max Walker bowl. A friend of mine said, 'Your action is just like Walker's'. I said, 'No chance. My action can't be like his.'
"But when I went back and saw the highlights of the match in news, I realised for the first time I actually bowled off the wrong foot."

Today it would be difficult to escape the coach’s notice if you bowled off the wrong foot. "Those days there was no concept of coaching. We used to just go play, try to win, and nobody ever told me that there was something wrong with my action. Nobody told me it was strange till then."

The action came naturally to Rashid, who is now the China coach, and he never felt uncomfortable bowling off the wrong foot. The advantage he got from bowling like that was something similar to what Wasim Akram gained from his action. Rashid wasn't quick in the air, but off the pitch he would come quicker than the others. It is a shame he hasn’t met Mike Procter or Max Walker; he would have experiences to share that only others wrong-footers might understand.

Rashid’s most memorable wicket is of course Richards's. "Sometimes with this action the arm goes quickly, but the ball comes slow. I had that advantage. I got Viv's wicket in that fashion in the first ODI. I was bowling outswingers, he committed to the shot, but the ball came slow, and he was caught at cover.

"Salim Parvez was always scared of facing me. He was tall, and struggled to get his bat down in time, because of the pace off the pitch. I always used to get him leg-before."

And this last bit is for scientists and evolutionists to wonder at: "My 18-year-old son, who has never seen me bowl or my tapes, bowls ditto like me," says Rashid.

We are supposed to meet Iqbal Qasim at 11am at the National Bank of Pakistan Stadium, a quaint little ground in the defence area of Karachi, where the teams are having their training sessions. After a long night's work, because of the timings of the Asia Cup matches, we oversleep, wake up at 11.30am, and try calling him on the phone. There is no response. On our way to the ground at around noon, we get through to him and pat comes the response, "Where are you? We were supposed to meet at 11?"

"But I tried calling you, and you didn't answer," my colleague says.

"But were we supposed to talk on the phone or meet in person?"

That was perhaps one of the most misleading first interactions you could have. When we reached the NBP Stadium we met this friendly talkative man, neither cranky nor idiosyncratic. The first thing you would notice about Qasim are his hands and fingers, which are big and broad, thick and long. The fingers on the left hand have signs of wear; he used them extensively to take 171 Test wickets, the most by a Pakistan left-arm spinner.

I want to talk to him about the famous Bangalore Test, when Bishan Bedi's tips helped turn the match Pakistan's way, and also about the time when "blood and bouncers kept the crowds happy". He has also been a national selector, and is just the man to talk to in the wake of the current selection controversy in Pakistan.

Qasim has a roundish face with different indentations on it. His eyes seem to act independent of the rest of the face; they can talk on their own. And he has a reassuring voice, which suggests you are talking to someone wise. Quite aptly he is called "kaka".

Mention him and Maninder Singh being the best left-arm spinners in the 1980s, the eyes transform from dispassionate (when taking about selection) to gleaming. "Our coach was the same: Bedi Sahab. He followed Bedi, and I have looked for tips from him from 1978 till now," Qasim says.

The talk inevitably moves to the Bangalore Test. And almost as if he is responsible for making Bedi sound like a traitor, Qasim says, "He didn't deliberately give us tips. It was the rest day of the Bangalore Test after the third day, and the Indian board had arranged a reception for us, a tradition that has been discontinued now.

"Tauseef and I were tired of the pressure and were the first ones to reach the venue. Bedi Sahab was there, and we started talking. I sat on the left, Tauseef on the right, and he in the middle. I told him, 'Kaptaan ji your student [Maninder] is bowling really well.'

"Now Bedi was a possessive coach, he expected a lot from his students and if they didn't live up to his expectations, he got furious. 'Ki khak kar reha hai? [He is bowling rubbish],' he said.

"And Maninder had taken seven wickets in the first innings! I was naturally surprised and when I told him that, he said, 'Agreed he has taken seven wickets but you don't know Kaka, the wicket is breaking by itself, and he is imparting even more break. As a result he is beating the batsmen, he is beating the stumps, and he is beating the wicketkeeper.'

"Still we had managed only 116 and 249. I looked at Tauseef, Tauseef looked at me, and we knew we didn't need to try and spin it much. We kept it in mind, and we applied it."

There is also the time he was felled by a Bob Willis bouncer at Edgbaston in 1978. A night watchman on the third day, Qasim had done his job for the evening but on the next morning Willis had had enough of him. He bowled two bouncers, which Qasim avoided, before going round the stumps to deliver a nasty one, which Qasim tried to defend but missed. It hit him on the lip and there was blood on the pitch. Willis just went back to his mark, showing no concern for the batsman's well-being whatsoever.

"There was an unwritten ethic those days, when unlimited bouncers were allowed and there was no protective gear available that fast bowlers shouldn't bowl bouncers to tail enders. But Willis said that I had settled in enough, and I had started to hurt them. We were a Kerry Packer-depleted side then and didn't have the bad fast bowlers; otherwise it would have been fun when Willis batted. Mike Brearley, their captain, sent a note of apology though.

"Sadiq Mohammad, the batsman at the other end when I was hit, wore a helmet for the first time in that match. It was given to him by Dennis Amiss, who is among the first ones to have ever worn a helmet on a cricket field. But Sadiq was booed by the crowd when he walked out wearing a helmet."

Those were the days when, as Tony Greig had mentioned in an interview 10 days ago, blood and bouncers kept the crowd happy.

For years he has answered to the question: who is the first man to have taken a hat-trick in ODIs? More than 25 years on Jalal-ud-Din's identity remains the same. "People ask me about that hat-trick only," he says. "But it's okay, I will tell you about that." Jalal-ud-din is 49 now, sports a grey beard, is balding, and with his glasses on cuts a studious picture. It is difficult for someone who was not born then, has not been able to get a tape of that hat-trick, to imagine this genial man bowling fast. And for most of his career he bowled with his glasses on.

After one sentence of resistance to talk about "pre-historic" things, he realises he is holding back a story that is a kid's favourite. And then he narrates it in detail. "I wouldn't even have played that match against Australia in Hyderabad. Imran Khan had just come back from England, and hadn't acclimatised enough to be playing this match. So I was called up at the last moment. And I flew from Karachi to Hyderabad. I had never done that before.

"After Australia had got a good start chasing 230, we had pulled things back with three quick wickets. Then I got Allan Border's wicket, which wasn't a part of the hat-trick. In the evening, Hyderabad starts getting a similar breeze as Karachi, and that helped my swing. In my seventh over, Rodney Marsh went for a big drive and missed my natural out-swinger that came into him and bowled him.

"Then Bruce Yardley, too, went to drive an out-swinger and edged it through. Now we realised I could take a hat-trick and that would be a big achievement. We brought the field in, and I had a plan. Since I had got two wickets with out-swingers and since I also knew that the new man was good at blocking and would thrust his front foot out, I wanted to bowl an in-swinger. I might be making it sound easy, but hat-tricks are not easy to get. It's not that you can announce and take a hat-trick.

"In the Karachi Test later that year, Imran was on a hat-trick, and the batsman coming out to face the hat-trick ball was Dilip Doshi. Now Imran had taken him out first ball for the last two-three times, and as recently as in the first innings of the same match. He was very confident and was ready to bet he would take the hat-trick. We were so scared he would do it that none of us took the bet. But Doshi managed to survive three balls.

"Coming back to my hat-trick, I bowled a big in-swinger to Geoff Lawson, who is also Pakistan's coach now, and it somehow found the slightest gap between his pad and bat. We realised only the next morning that it was the first hat-trick in ODI cricket."

A coincidence it is that Lawson was the last victim in his hat-trick, and Jalal-ud-Din till not long ago was the only Level 3 qualified coach in Pakistan. He runs his own cricket academy now, which runs in co-operation with the PCB, and works at developing both home-grown coaches and young talent for Pakistan. Shahid Afirdi has associated with them to popularize one of the coaching programmes. Mohammad Sami, Hasan Raza and Fawad Alam are some of the famous players to have come out of his academy. "But it is not just the immediate results that we are looking at," he says. "We have been working scientifically, have taken help from outside Pakistan whenever we need, and have looked to develop cricketers from grass-root level."

As he explains what all he looks for in a young pace bowler – natural pace, fitness and build, action and alignment, and attitude in that order – it starts becoming easier for someone who has not seen him bowl to believe he was a pace bowler and took the first hat-trick in ODI cricket.

	Following cricket on the radio © AFP

Suresh Saraiya's voice, for a long time, had been the link between the Indian fans and their cricket. With Saraiya here in Karachi for a commentary stint, one finally got to add a face to the voice. He is what your typical commentator would be: not short of an analogy, or a story to go with it. He has a storyteller's voice, and a storyteller's eyes, which gleam anew every time he starts a new story.

On the silver jubilee of India's World Cup success, he has an interesting tale to tell of the days India, in one-day cricket, were respected as much as Bangladesh or Hong Kong are today. "As you can see Hong Kong here hanging in [they had at a point reduced Pakistan to 161 for 7], trying to justify their place here, but nobody takes them really seriously. India were much the same before the 1983 success.

"And we ourselves never took the one-day game seriously. Nineteen eighty-three just happened. Even AIR didn't consider it worth sending a commentary team to England. We were supposed to go, but just before the tournament we were told we were not going."

But Saraiya has commentated on a successful day or two. None less than when India chased 403 successfully on the 1975-76 tour of the West Indies. Ravi Chaturvedi, his colleague and a famous Hindi commentator, and Saraiya apparently fought with each other; they both wanted to be on air when the winning runs were scored. The most embarrassing moment for Saraiya, and one of the funniest in a commentary box, came on the same tour when Bishan Bedi dropped Clive Lloyd off his own bowling in the Jamaica Test, and also hurt his little finger in the process.

"I said on air, 'Bedi has dropped Lloyd when he went for a return catch and hurt his…' and then I stopped. I said the same thing again and stopped. I was growing conscious of holding the listeners up, but I didn't know then what the little finger was called. In Gujarati schools, they
don't teach you the human anatomy beyond eyes, ears and nose. I asked Ravi for help, showing him my little finger.

"Ravi said, 'Okay you go, I will handle it.' How could I tell him that I wanted to know what you called it, and that I didn't want to relieve myself? In the end I said, 'Bedi has dropped Lloyd when he went for a return catch and hurt the smallest of the four fingers on his left hand.'"

Saraiya remembers vividly when he made his debut in 1965; he had Vijay Merchant and Dicky Rutnagur for company then. "It was like bowling your first over on debut to Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly." Manjrekar and he went back a long way. "There was a Shetty restaurant, 'Alankar', near Merchant's office in Bombay. They had a blackboard for the daily menu, but when a Test match would be on I would go and listen to the commentary, maintain updated scores along with my own comments. Manjrekar liked what I wrote, and my remuneration would be one plain dosa and one filter coffee for the day's work."

Commentary, for him, is like playing cricket: you need to know the game inside out, and you need to have the right technique, which is a good voice, clear thoughts, and the play of phrase. Saraiya must have had all that, one can tell that – because when he tells a story he generally has your attention, and doesn't leave you disappointed by the end of it.

Travel agent. Visa agent. Passport photograph. Accreditation form. Indian media manager. Pakistan media manager. Ministry of Interior. Damn the visa process.

Tickets can't be booked from Bangalore. Find journalist contacts in India. Find journalist contacts in Pakistan. Unresponsive Ministry of Interior. Be told how difficult it was for Pakistan journalists to get Indian visa for the tour last year. Early-morning flight to Delhi. Pakistan Embassy. 9am. Visa agent on the way. Press Secretary. Reception outside Pakistan Embassy. Window No. 5. Queue. Question the visa concept.

9.30am. Visa agent still on the way. Overhear at reception of Embassy, "Janab we have been sitting outside since 4am, and there is not even water here." Damn the visa concept.

Call Pakistan International Airlines (PIA). There is enough time to either make the booking or reach the airport. Indira Gandhi International Airport. A locked PIA office. A flight can either be taken in 90 minutes or after 48 hours. At the airport gate without a ticket. Call PIA again. Helpful lady answers. But passport has been forgotten in the cab. Call the driver. Get the passport back. Good man. Ticket at last. Sleep on boarding. In-flight lunch. In-flight information. A Delhi-to-Karachi map. A "disputed territory" just under Himalayas. Jinnah International Airport. Posh. Call a colleague. Go over to the National Stadium. Realise, for the first time in three days, it's cricket I’m are here for. Drive around Karachi with a colleague. Forget the pains of the visa concept.