July 4, 2004

WASIM Bari was a contemporary of Allan Knott. Bari thought that Knott was the best keeper in the world. Allan Knott, on the other hand pinned that medal of honour on Wasim Bari. Good friends, there was also a mutual admiration, you call me Hajji and I’ll call you Hajji agreement. The fact was that they were both outstanding and those who followed them suffered by comparison.

I did not know Allan Knott as a person but I do know Wasim Bari. I have known him since 1967 when he toured England and made his Test debut at Lord’s. He was the youngest member of the team, a mere boy doing a man’s job but he kept the job till he retired in 1984 and this fact alone is something of a world record for a wicket-keeper. He could have gone on longer but he listened to some inner voice and decided to hang-up his gloves. Enough was better than more than enough. He had consulted his family and he had come to see me to tell me of his decision before he made it public. Was he half-hoping that I may try and dissuade him? I think not. He trusted me and as he said to me he valued my judgment. I told him that the best time to leave the stage was when the audience was still clamouring for more and not when one is greeted with rotten eggs and tomatoes. Sooner or later he would have to call it a day. Why not when he was ahead? One door had been closed but, as, sometimes happens to good people, another door had opened and he went about his career in PIA with the same single-mindedness with which he kept wickets and is now a key member of the airline’s senior management.

I have only a hazy recollection of how Bari landed in PIA. I had met him at a reception at the Karachi Gymkhana in 1968 and we had got started making small talk. I learnt that he was a college graduate with an unlikely degree (for cricketers) of BCom. I asked him whether he wanted to work for PIA and his eyes lit up and I told him he was hired and to come and see me and we would get the paper-work done. Since he was a graduate, I did not want him in the sports pool but to slot him in so that he could have a career when his playing days were over. To cut a long story short, I was able to place him in the regular cadre. I told him that he could continue to play cricket but he should also learn a trade so that when his playing days were over, he would have a career. It worked out beautifully. When he was not playing cricket, he attended office and found his own bearings.

There is a generation-gap between Bari and me, but he has been close to me, like a devoted nephew. I have been on several tours with him. He was a team man and the fact that he was representing his country was honour enough. He minded his business and stayed away from ‘groupings’ and I have never seen him give less than a hundred per cent and never heard him grumbling. He was careful never to impinge on my privacy but one can get lonely on cricket tours and because Bari was very close to his family, I would imagine that he would get homesick and he would seek me out and we would go out and have a meal. Sometimes, the meal was the price I had to pay by setting what I thought were impossible goals for him. Thus in 1971 at Leeds, I was kidding him about his batting and it seemed a sensitive subject. “What will you give me if I was to score fifty?” he asked defiantly. I told him that I would take him to Angus Steak House and buy him the biggest steak on the menu. Sure enough the damn fellow went out and made fifty. And off we went to Angus Steak House. In the same Test match, he took some dazzling catches and none better than the one he took to dismiss Brian Luckhurst off Asif Masood, in the vicinity of first slip, diving and coming up with the catch. The batsman stood in disbelief until the umpire gave him his marching orders.

That evening, he showed up at my hotel room, smartly dressed. “That catch was better than the fifty I scored,” he said to me. “So what?” I asked. “That’s another steak you owe me,” and we went back to the steak house.

As wicket-keepers go, he was not a jumping jack. He did not appeal needlessly, did not shahbash, shahbash the bowler. If he had an observation, he had a quiet chat with the captain. But nothing went past him. His batting skills are not much praised but in 1977 at Bridgetown, Barbados, Pakistan found itself at 159 for 9 when Bari joined Wasim Raja and against an attack that included Roberts, Croft and Garner at their lethal best. They put on 133 for the last wicket and Bari remained not out on 60. He was no rabbit as a batsman but if he was, he was like Bugs Bunny. I don’t think he paid too much attention to his batting, his entire focus was on his wicket-keeping.

Wasim Bari lives fairly close to where I live and on his way back from his office, he drops by to touch base almost every evening. He won’t admit it but he just wants to make sure that all is well with me. If there is any cricket on television, we watch it together. Most Sundays, he and I have lunch together with Rafi Munir joining in more often than not. They are most enjoyable lunches and we shoot the breeze and have a few laughs. As chairman of the selection committee, he is very much his own man. Sometimes he will ask me what I think of some player and I give my opinion but he gets no input from me and he has no likes or dislikes and does his job honestly. He brooks no interference in his job and by the same token, having selected the squad, he does not interfere with the team management. But he feels strongly about Pakistan cricket and makes his views known but in the right quarters and not through the media. He keeps a low profile and his ego is subservient to his principles.

But I have seen Wasim Bari in a “take charge “ situation. When Farooq Mazhar had been taken seriously ill, the dreaded cancer came calling, he insisted on returning to Houston where his family was. He was to take a PIA flight to Bahrain and then transfer to another airline to Houston. Bari took charge of the arrangements. He saw him off and briefed the crew, he alerted the Bahrain station manager. During the flight, Farooq had a heart attack and went into a coma. Bari set up a hot line and the wonderful PIA manager rendered all possible assistance. Farooq did not make it.

Farooq’s family had arrived in Bahrain and they brought the body back. Wasim Bari picked me up at four in the morning and we went to the airport and we met with the family and Bari made their travel arrangements for Lahore. Bari had no time to grieve. He was focused on the job at hand much in the way he had squatted behind the stumps, shutting off the world around him. When Farooq’s wife Khalida thanked Bari for all his assistance, he brushed it aside and said that he was only doing his job. He wasn’t being modest, he was being just himself.

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