I almost quit after spot-fixing scandal, says Waqar Younis

LONDON: The 2010 spot-fixing fiasco at Lord’s now sounds a distant memory but ask Waqar Younis and he will tell you that the scars of the scandal remains intact.

In an interview with Cricinfo, Waqar said that he seriously considered resigning as the team’s coach in the aftermath of the scandal back in 2010.

“We all were very upset with the whole episode and everyone was down and out, and we couldn’t really play the next day,” Waqar said. “I still remember... the late Yawar Saeed was the manager, and he was very upset and we couldn’t do anything and it was very, very ugly,” he added referring to the scandal that resulted in three of the country’s leading players — captain Salman Butt, Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif — being banned from international cricket.

“Even at one stage, I thought ‘that’s it, do I really want to work, do I really want to carry on with this whole thing?’ I went back and I spoke to my family and I couldn’t really leave the team at the time. I went back and thought about it and I wanted to back these guys. It’s not their fault, it’s maybe one or two who have done it, but the rest, they don’t deserve all this and if I leave now, it’s going to get worse. Then, Misbah [ul-Haq] took over [as captain] and things started sort of rolling better and we did extremely well after that.”

Waqar said that he was left bewildered by Amir’s big no-ball at the Lord’s Test.

“Look, when the whole thing happened, we were in a very good situation,” Waqar said. “That was the first morning of the Test match and they were five down when the whole thing happened, and they came out and then I sort of asked him [Amir] ‘what the hell was that, there were couple of no-balls, and not the small no-balls, they were like a huge no-balls’.

“That was more surprising for me [because he didn’t have a history of bowling no-balls]. Salman Butt, of course, jumped in and he said, ‘I told him to do it because Jonathan Trott was batting, and he said he was coming down the track and I thought of [asking him to] just bang in a couple short, don’t worry about the no-ball.’

“This is the answer I got from the captain, and, of course, from the bowler, and I bought it. Any coach, if you ask him if this is a tactic or captain tells you that this is a tactic, you will say, ‘yeah, okay, fair enough’.”

While Waqar sounded sympathetic to Amir, he said he felt let down by Butt. “Amir was very, very down and why I feel for him is that because he was only like 17 then or 18, very young and from a very humble background, very poor background,” he said. “Someone who has been asked to do certain things for, you know, such a big amount, that’s how I take it.”

Waqar is of the view that Butt and Asif also deserve a second chance.

“It was a mistake and every human being... we are here, we make mistakes and we get punished for that and then the society and the culture give them that room again to come and be himself again,” he said. “He [Amir] could have achieved what even I didn’t or even Wasim didn’t achieve.

“He suffered a lot for five years, and my religion also says that if someone has done something and has been punished and the entire society has punished him for all these years, he deserves a chance. And, the same way, I feel that Salman Butt deserves a chance, Mohammad Asif deserves a chance. They have been through all the punishment they deserve.”