Cricket: Match-fixing whispers anger Young

Bryan Young led New Zealand to victory in the third test against Pakistan in 1994. Photo / Getty Images

It is one of those games about which whispers have swirled almost since it happened.

And after the Pakistani spot fixing allegations in England over the last week, it remains in many minds in the "what if" category.

New Zealand, having been taken apart by Pakistan in the first two tests of their tour in 1994, won the third match at Christchurch by five wickets.

Requiring a record fourth innings target of 324 to win, New Zealand got there on the back of centuries by Bryan Young and Shane Thomson, with five wickets to spare.

To those with a suspicious mind and an eye for a conspiracy, it reeked of possibilities.

The great pace pair Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis had cut New Zealand to pieces at Eden Park and the Basin Reserve. How come it didn't happen at Lancaster Park on February 27-28, the final two days of that test?

Young feels passionately about events in that game and his view remains unchanged 16 years on: as far as he is concerned there were no shenanigans.

What angers Young about the present scandal is what he calls the "double travesty" surrounding common events in the game.

"Missing a straight one, dropping a howler, throwing a ball 10 feet wide [3m] of the keeper when the batsman is stranded at the other end," he said.

"All those things that are quite comical and actually happen anyway; all of a sudden when Pakistan do it, it's 'what's going on there'?

"And the double travesty is it impacts on the other, or innocent party."

In this case that was New Zealand. Whispers that perhaps Pakistan didn't try too hard imply it was a too-easily achieved victory.

The backdrop was that Akram and Younis, going into the final New Zealand innings of the series, had taken 22 and 17 wickets of the 50 to fall thus far, steamrolling their way through the rubber.

However Northern Districts teammates Young and Thomson shared a 154-run fifth-wicket stand to rescue New Zealand from 133 for four and set up the win.

Both made 120, Thomson remaining not out for his only test hundred. Young made one other, 267 not out against Sri Lanka in Dunedin three years later.

Young's experiences in that innings convince him Pakistan were working overtime to make it a clean sweep.

"I've never faced anything like it," he says of the Pakistani quicks.

"Did I think there was anything happening? No.

"Was I trying my tits off every ball and ever think it was easy, or did Thommo and I ever say 'gee, that's strange'? No.

"Did Akram and Younis come down and abuse the living crap out of both of us when they couldn't get us out, and have the sweat pouring off them as they were charging in at 90mph and hitting us at will? Yes.

"I was black and blue from my hip bone to beneath my arm pit. Thommo had a finger dislocated.

"We're talking about a flat wicket and those guys could hit us when they wanted.

"If those guys weren't trying, I don't get it, I really don't."

Akram and Younis bowled a combined 65 out of 107 overs in that innings. Young batted a tick under seven hours; Thomson, who adopted a more high-risk game, a shade under four hours.

In light of recent events, it's intriguing to note Pakistan bowled 42 no-balls in that test.

Young puts that down in large part to having problems in the take-off area, because of a compound used to fill the holes, which set like concrete.

The bowlers were trying to avoid landing on it, and that cost them rhythm and led to some overstepping.

In the current climate, many past games involving Pakistan are being revisited. Whether a game was bent or on the level is a desperately difficult thing to prove.

But Young is adamant, whatever the doubters say, that he and Thomson experienced Pakistan trying flat out to win. He feels as passionately about it now as he did at the time.

"If it comes out in the wash that one, two or three players confess and that it was on the make, I want that game erased from the records. I want my first test century erased.

"As far as I would be concerned, it would never have happened, and whilst that will hurt I will absolutely feel it is the right thing to do.

"I don't want to be part of something that just wasn't a game of sport, of two countries going head to head and may the best team win."