Ball was tampered during India tour of Pakistan in 1989: Kiran More

Former Indian wicketkeeper Kiran More recently revealed that the ball was tampered during the Test series between India and Pakistan in 1989. Players of both the teams would keep scratching the ball to generate the reverse swing. However, no action was taken against any player as there was no provision for punishment in such instances.

The Indian cricket team toured Pakistan in 1989 for a four-match Test and ODI series. It can be referred to as a special series as two prolific cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Waqar Younis made their international debut. Though all the four Test matches resulted in a draw, India had to face defeat in One Day Internationals with a score of 2-0.

Speaking on ‘The Greatest Rivalry Podcast’, More reminisced his memories of the 1989 Pakistan tour. He recalled how batting was difficult in that series as bowlers of both the teams used to scratch the ball. Also, despite knowing about the foul, the umpires couldn’t do much as there were no penalties for this offence.

“In those days, scratching the ball was allowed, so you used to get reverse swing, big time. It was like, nobody used to complain from both sides. Everybody used to scratch the ball and reverse swing the ball. It was difficult to bat, it was not easy to bat. Even Manoj Prabhakar learned on that team how to scratch that ball and reverse swing that ball and Pakistan found it challenging,” the former chief selector revealed.

We were powerless: John Holder

Earlier, John Holder, one of the umpires from that series, had in an interview revealed that they were powerless and could do nothing about the ball-tampering issue. Holder also recalled bringing both the captains Kris Srikkanth and Imran khan to talk but he didn’t receive any fruitful outcome. However, Holder appreciated the change in rules as now the umpires can ban the bowler from bowling for the rest of the series if found guilty.

John had told Mid-Day in 2018, “A wicket would fall – and in those days the umpires didn’t necessarily get hold of the ball after every over – and the players would just stand there scratching it. And it got to a point where despite what we had to say on the field, we had to get the two captains and the two managers together. We said this is illegal.”

“The problem was we were powerless, because there were no sanctions we could apply. Later there was a rewrite of the laws and they decided to bring penalty runs in for ball-tampering. And then they decided you could ban the bowler from bowling for the rest of the innings.”, he had added.