During a commentary stint in Dubai recently, Geoffrey Boycott mentioned Javed Miandad as "a cricketer of rare class who was endowed with a great cricketing brain too". What he did not mention was that Miandad's inimical captain Imran Khan tried his best to ruin his career in collusion with Imtiaz Ahmed. Miandad's career at that point was saved by the world famous 'sixer-on-the-last ball' at Sharjah. Imran did, however, succeed in ruining the career of Qasim Omar. Even today, people remember the great angst at declaration of the Pakistani innings at Hyderabad when Javed Miandad had already scored 280 not out and seemed well on his way to breaking Sir Gary Sobers' world record. Sometime ago, Imran defended his action by quoting Australian captain Mark Taylor's declaration at Peshawar when his individual score was 334. Taylor did, indeed, declare the innings one run short of Sir Don Bradman's highest score ever but he did so to honour the memory of his hero and the greatest Australian legend. Mathew Hayden later did not have the same inhibition as Brian Lara had already broken Sir Don's record by scoring 400 runs. Hayden broke Lara's record. -M.M. RAB, Karachi, via e-mail, June 9.