During Pakistan's 1992 tour of England, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis took 41 wickets between them with reverse-swing bowling that English batters and tabloid press could not understand. Pakistan won the series 2-1; English newspapers accused them of ball-tampering and the row poisoned England-Pakistan relations for a decade.
Imran Khan had taught reverse swing to Wasim Akram in the late 1980s. By 1991 Wasim had taken 6/91 against England in a Test in Leeds. Waqar's toe-crushing yorkers had won Pakistan series in West Indies and at home.
Pakistan arrived in England as world champions, having won the World Cup at Melbourne in March. Imran Khan had retired; Javed Miandad captained. The series ran from June to August across Edgbaston, Lord's, Old Trafford, Headingley and the Oval.
Reverse swing — old ball swinging towards the shiny side instead of away from it — was a Pakistani specialty perfected by Sarfraz Nawaz in the 1970s, taught to Imran Khan, and inherited by Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. By 1992 the pair were the most lethal new-and-old-ball partnership in the world. England, expecting orthodox swing and seam, were repeatedly bowled middle-stump-and-leg by deliveries that swung in unprecedented directions. Wasim took 21 wickets, Waqar 22; the next best was Devon Malcolm with 15. England tabloids — particularly the Daily Mirror — accused Pakistan of ball-tampering using bottle tops, fingernails and lifted seams. The accusations exploded during a one-day international at Lord's on August 23 when umpires Don Oslear and John Hampshire changed the ball mid-innings without explanation. Pakistan claimed nothing was wrong; England's tabloids interpreted the change as proof of cheating. Allan Lamb, the South Africa-born England batter, eventually wrote a Daily Mirror column accusing Pakistan of tampering. Pakistan sued for libel. The case finally collapsed in 1996. ICC referee Deryck Murray's confidential report from the Lord's ODI was never published.
Lord's Test, June: Pakistan win by 2 wickets — Wasim 4 wickets in low chase
Old Trafford Test: drawn
Headingley Test: England win — only Test where England's bowlers matched up
Oval Test, August: Pakistan win by 10 wickets; Waqar 6/65
Lord's ODI, August 23: umpires change ball mid-innings without explanation
Daily Mirror runs Lamb's tampering accusation
Pakistan sues; case eventually collapses 1996
June 1992
Series begins; Wasim and Waqar dominant from first Test.
August 22-23, 1992
Lord's ODI: ball changed mid-innings without explanation.
Late August 1992
Daily Mirror tampering accusation; Lamb column; libel suits filed.
1996
Libel actions collapse; no proof of tampering ever produced.
“If England's bowlers could have done it, no one would have called it cheating. They couldn't, so they did.”
“Reverse swing was an art. We were the first to do it well at international level.”
Pakistan won the Test series 2-1. The libel actions and counter-claims dragged on for four years. Imran Khan, returning to the public conversation, argued in the Daily Telegraph that reverse swing was art, not cheating. The English cricket establishment slowly came around — by the 2005 Ashes, Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones were lauded for the same reverse swing English papers had once branded illegal.
A scandal that wasn't — reverse swing was legal, but the cricket world was not yet ready to admit Pakistan had invented something the English bowlers had not. Within a decade Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones were doing the same.
Today reverse swing is an acknowledged, legal craft taught at all levels. The 1992 row is remembered as a case-study in cricketing tribalism: technique that one side could not master was assumed to be cheating. Wasim Akram still routinely calls it 'racism dressed up as sport'.
England
1932-08-12
In August 1932 the MCC selectors confirmed Douglas Jardine as England's captain for the 1932-33 tour of Australia, a decision contested at the highest levels of English cricket and one that — combined with Plum Warner's appointment as tour manager — would set the conditions for the Bodyline series.
England
1934-03-21
On 21 March 1934 Douglas Jardine wrote to The Cricketer that he had 'neither the desire nor the intention' of playing in the upcoming home Ashes series. The announcement, taken as a quiet resignation, removed the architect of Bodyline from the field before Australia returned to England — a precondition Australia's Board had implicitly demanded.
England / Gloucestershire
1937-11-15
In November 1937 Wally Hammond — the leading professional batsman of his era — was accepted by MCC as an amateur, opening the door to the England captaincy he received six months later for the 1938 Ashes. The change crystallised inter-war debates about the amateur-professional divide and the unwritten rule that England's captain be amateur.