PAKISTANI cricketing legend Imran Khan (43) swung into action at the High Court yesterday when he took the witness stand and delivered his evidence at breakneck speed.
Watched by his pregnant wife Jemima, Imran was begged by his counsel, Mr George Carman QC: "Do it slowly. You are going at fast bowler pace at the moment."
After taking the jury on a whistle top tour through his career Imran said he lived with his wife, two sisters and their husbands in Lahore.
Asked to assess Ian Botham who, with former England team mate, Allan Lamb, is suing him for libel, he said: "He's by far the greatest all rounder England has produced. He's one of the greatest of the world.
"He's a much more talented cricketer than I ever was and he was a completely natural cricketer, graced with tremendous ability and, although three years younger than me, went way ahead of all of us.
Botham and Lamb are suing Imran over an "offensive personal attack" on them in India Today magazine, which they say called them racist, uneducated, and lacking class and upbringing.
Botham alone is suing over a May 1994 report in the Sun, which, he says, accused him of ball tampering - something he says he has never done.
Imran, who denies libel, says his words were taken out of context and he was only trying to defend himself.
In a 1994 unauthorised biography, he volunteered information about how he used a bottle top to tamper with the ball during a 1981 county match because he was trying to clarify the whole controversial issue.
"There was no reason for me to say it. But as there was so much confusion about ball tampering in this country, I was trying to give him an example of the one thing I had done in my life which I considered cheating.
"I was trying to make him understand what were the permissible limits - what was accepted and what was an unfair advantage."
Asked by his counsel, Mr George Carman QC, if he considered himself under attack in the wake of his confession, he said: "Like an attack I have never known in my life."
Botham, sitting alongside his wife Kathy, and Allan and Lindsay Lamb, kept his head down writing notes as Imran said that he was at his best, as a swing bowler, in 1981.
Imran said that in May 1994 he wrote to David Richards, chief executive of the ICC, which ran cricket worldwide, warning that unless the issue was addressed it would do "immense damage" as it was likely to raise its "ugly head" at any stage, especially when Pakistan played England next.