Gul the right man to contest Butt's case

PUNE (India) Pakistans suspended Test captain Salman Butts lawyer Aftab Gul is a former Test cricketer and played six Tests from 1969 to 1971. Gul was an opening batsman who had scored more than 1,000 runs in the tour of England in 1971. The profile of 65-year-old cricketer-cum-lawyer Gul is very interesting. I am the only player who played Test match while on bail, he said. From 1968 to 1969, he became the first player to appear in the first-class cricket while on bail for political activities. Such was his following as a student leader that it was said that Pakistan officials did not dare to play the Lahore Test without him in the team. In the first Test match at Lahore against Collin Cowdreys MCC in 1968, I was released on bail so that I could participate in the match, he said. I have been a political activist for the last more than four decades and I am a founder member of the Pakistan Peoples Party. There are very few of us left who formed a political party with the leftist socialist leanings in 1967 under the leadership of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. The party has moved away from its original intent but I remain where I was on the left and in thrall of Karl Marx, Gul further said. In 1971 by the first week of June, I was the leading run getter in England as a member of the Pakistani team and then I had this unfortunate incident of being hit on the fourth ball of the first over during the first Test at Edgbaston. I was taken to hospital but declared fit. I only needed six stitches. The joke at the time was that Aftab Guls head had been examined by a doctor and he said there was nothing in it, he said. In the first over of the first Test at Birmingham in that series, he was struck on the head by Alan Ward and was forced to retire. This injury drew the famous line from Brian Johnston on the BBC the next day: Guls alright. The doctor inspected his head this morning and found nothing in it. Although my career has been interrupted by various events over which I did not have any control, yet I have returned to this profession and am now working from an office in Lahore, Gul concluded.

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