It’s mango season in Pakistan, but over in England, Daniel Vettori seems to have gone bananas, says Imran Yusuf . Geoffrey Boycott once said that Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis were so proficient in the art of reversing a cricket ball that they could make an orange swing. It’s mango season in Pakistan but over in England it seems Daniel Vettori has gone bananas.

‘I don't think in the history of Twenty20 cricket anyone's got the ball to reverse,’ said the New Zealand captain, referring to Umer Gul’s three-over spell in which the fast-bowler gorged on five whole kiwis.

There’s a lot to be said about his statement. Firstly, its sly, non-committal innuendo reminds me of Mickey Stewart, a former manager of the English cricket team. After Akram and Younis swung their way through entire English batting line-ups in the 1990s, Stewart told a press conference that he knew very well what the Pakistani bowlers were up to, but he wasn't going to say what it was. It smacked of the worst kind of disdainful arrogance, the kind that implies everything while being responsible for nothing.

Secondly, Vettori’s statement is factually incorrect. Not only has Gul been doing this for two years, but in the very same match New Zealand’s bowlers swung the ball towards the end of Pakistan’s innings. It also seems as if Vettori has never seen Lasith Malinga bowl in a Twenty20 game. He’d better get on YouTube right away and have a look because his team plays Sri Lanka this afternoon.

I also hope Vettori was watching yesterday, when Gul carried on bowling reverse-swinging yorkers against the Irish, who actually played him reasonably well (though not well enough to prevent him from picking up two wickets).

Part of me wishes Vettori’s statement about the impossibility of reverse swinging were true, because it would emphasise that Pakistan has been one of the most innovative nations in modern cricket history.

If few bowlers are currently reversing the ball in Twenty20 cricket, it’s only because they don’t yet know how. Soon they will. It was the same story with reverse swing in the longer forms of the game. In 1979, Sarfraz Nawaz took seven wickets for one run in Melbourne. He allied an action built for reverse swing with an instinctive feel for the ball. As Imran Khan put it, Nawaz 'always seemed to know which ball would swing more than others and, as a result, he invariably made the choice when the umpires presented a box of new balls.’

Soon Khan himself had learnt the tricks and subsequently passed them on to Akram and Younis. By that time, reverse swing was routinely dismissed by the ignorant as glorified cheating. This was the case until Andrew Flintoff and Simon Jones used it to propel England to Ashes glory in 2005. It’s no coincidence that Jones had learnt from Younis when they played county cricket together for Glamorgan; Flintoff had earlier been trained by Akram, his captain at Lancashire.

It is true that our players have been caught and reprimanded for tampering with the ball, as have many other players from different countries, including that mild, decent, Cambridge-educated fellow, Michael Atherton. Khan even admitted to using a bottle top to scuff up the ball during a county match in the 1980s. He was just being honest. As Michael Holding has pointed out, the practice of tampering was widespread, and a fast-bowler who claims he’s never done it is either a liar or a fool.

Anybody can dig a nail into a cricket ball. Not everybody can do what Pakistani bowlers stretching from Nawaz to Gul have done to such devastating effect. Pakistanis have been reverse-swinging for years, largely as a result of their home pitches: with little life in the surface to assist fast bowlers, they’ve been forced to be creative. Growing up playing tape ball cricket has also been a major factor: taped tennis balls swing, especially if one side is left open, and even more so if you bowl fast.

Akram has actually demystified the process of reverse-swing, pointing out that a bowler should just practice. Rough up a ball on one side, shine the other, put it in your bag, go to the nets, and just bowl. That’s the King of Swing’s advice. And it has certainly worked for Gul. Younis Khan has talked of Gul’s great application: he has watched videos, asked advice, and practiced repeatedly in order to perfect his bowling action for reverse swing.

We Pakistanis are often hardest on ourselves. As part of the self-flaggellation we concede that we’re lazy and uncommited. But in the case of reverse swing, we should stress that this is something we’ve worked on for decades, refined, improved and mastered.

It is ironic that Gul’s swing bowling at the Oval has caused a controversy - it was his swinging yorker which trapped Alistair Cook LBW in 2006 and led to the infamous forfeited Test. Like that time, none of the 42 or so television cameras at the ground against New Zealand picked up any illegal tampering. Unlike that time, the Twenty20 umpires didn’t have a problem. There's no question of cheating anymore - at the highest level, reverse swing is now purely a matter of talent and technique.

Of course, reverse swing is not the only innovation of the Pakistan team. Think of the reverse-sweep (Mushtaq Mohammad), neutral umpires (Imran Khan), the doosra (Saqlain Mushtaq), bringing the World Cup out of England for the first time (the Board in 1987), and bizarre cases such as Javed Miandad keeping his right pad adjacent to the outside edge of his bat when playing Bishan Bedi’s left-arm spin in order to block a possible nick.

Ultimately, I think Vettori will reflect on his statements and agree that Gul’s brilliance was a reflection of sweet skill, not rotten deception.  For the moment, his comments come of as a case of sour grapes.