There was just enough familiarity to stir sensory memories.

The same slender figure as in 2010. The same rapid, slightly shuffling run-up that looks a little incongruous for such a tall man. The same tight gather, unfurling into a whipped left-arm delivery. The same lean away to the right, which looks like it should completely unbalance him but doesn’t.

Some things were different here, in 2026. The bowling was not quite as quick. The swing not as violent. The hair shorter. The physique more developed. The features more mature — a man now rather than a boy in a man’s body.

But the thing that really remained in the Hundred final, a couple of weeks ago at Lord’s, was a sense of what might have been. What should have been.

Mohammad Amir has enjoyed a good cricket career. He won 36 Test caps and made 123 white-ball appearances for Pakistan. He won the 2009 Twenty20 World Cup and the 2017 Champions Trophy. He has spent much of the last decade on the franchise cricket circuit, making a nice living playing. He has taken 266 first-class wickets at a terrific average of 22.63.

He could have been one of the greats, though, had he not been caught spot-fixing during a Test match when he was just 18. Had he not been banned from all cricket for over four years, and not spent 82 days in prison.

He came back, picked again by Pakistan in 2016, his ban served. He played another 22 Tests after his return and was pretty good. But having lost those four years, he was no longer the astonishing force of his early career, the hurricane of a fast bowler that blew England and Australia away while he was still a teenager. He could have been leading this Pakistan attack today, as they return to Lord’s for the second Test.

If only he had not lost those four years.

It is almost exactly 16 years since one version of Amir’s career died.

The morning of Thursday, August 26, 2010, was rainy, but the weather had cleared by the early afternoon when Amir ran in to bowl the third over of England’s innings, captain Alastair Cook, the batter.

The first delivery was called a no-ball. Usually, when a bowler oversteps his mark, it is by an inch or so. This one was closer to a foot. At first, perhaps because of a collective naivety, there was surprise that he had erred by so much but surely this was just a mistake, a young bowler who had made a misjudgment.

But an air of unease hung around, especially when he did it again the next day. By that point, England were in trouble, 52-5, with Amir responsible for most of that damage, having taken four wickets for zero runs, laying waste to England’s top order.

After a short chat with his captain, Salman Butt, Amir bowled another no ball on the third delivery of the 19th over. Again, it was huge. This time, there was more chat, more brows furrowed.

By Saturday, rumours began that a newspaper story was brewing, one that would implicate some Pakistan players in illicit dealings, maybe even match-fixing. “Please don’t let it be the kid,” said former England captain Nasser Hussain.

It was the kid. A story in the News of the World, a now-defunct Sunday newspaper, revealed that Butt had been caught in a sting operation by the notorious investigative journalist Mazher Mahmood and had taken money to ensure that no balls were bowled at predetermined points of the game.

The theory was that knowing the timing of those no balls would allow gamblers to place bets and profit, which is, needless to say, illegal. It turned out not to be match-fixing, but spot-fixing — the distortion of discrete events that were unlikely to impact the final result of the game.

Butt, along with agent and bookmaker Mazhar Majeed, recruited Amir and his fellow opening bowler Mohammad Asif. Amir later claimed he had refused to take part in the scheme twice, but was pressured into it. He said he didn’t even touch the £1,500 he had been given by Majeed, money that was later found by police in the safe of his hotel room.

After the game, which England came back to win convincingly, the scandal hung thick in the air. A fantastically awkward scene presented itself when Giles Clarke, the famously pompous chairman of the ECB, refused to shake Amir’s hand as he handed over his medal and novelty-sized cheque for £4,000, reward for being named Pakistan’s player of the series.

On Sky Sports, Michael Holding was on the verge of tears. “An 18-year-old with that sort of talent, for him to be getting involved in this,” he said, voice trembling. “I’m absolutely sure he didn’t go looking for anything. Someone has dragged him into this. And it’s so sad.”

Holding was devastated because the game he loved had been perverted — and he knew what was to come.

Butt, Asif and Amir were quickly banned by the International Cricket Council: Butt for 10 years with five suspended, Asif for seven years with two suspended and Amir for five years. They were later all jailed for 30 months, 12 months and six months respectively for gambling offences.

Amir was released halfway through his sentence, but served all but six months of his ban from cricket.

It is possible, because those initial salvos were so brief, to misremember and exaggerate how good Amir was, to romanticise an incredible talent lost to the game.

Amir tried to play it down, years later, claiming that his early brilliance was a product of circumstance rather than necessarily his own genius. “That year everyone swung the ball,” he told Cricket Monthly in 2020. “The wickets, the overhead conditions.”

But the Lord’s Test was his 14th, and during it he took his 50th wicket at the age of 18 years and 136 days, making him the youngest to reach that mark. Cricinfo praised his “fighting attitude, his perseverance, his knack of reading batters’ grey areas”. He made batters old enough to be his father look like fools: he dismissed Andrew Strauss and Ricky Ponting four times, Mike Hussey three.

He was breathtakingly good, unplayable at times, particularly in helpful English conditions as his swinging deliveries fizzed at batters like tracer bullets. For a teenager, his mastery was remarkable. At the time, it was difficult to think of anyone who had been so good, so young.

“He was incredibly special,” says Mickey Arthur, coach of Pakistan from 2016 when Amir returned, and a man the bowler has cited as one of the key influences on his post-suspension career.

The question is inevitable: how good could he have been were it not for his ban?

“He’d be one of the all-time greats,” says Arthur. “He would have been up there in terms of Test wickets. Around that period of time, he would have been in the top three fast bowlers in world cricket.”

The four and a half years he missed, between the ages of 18 and 22, are crucial for any bowler’s development. Not peak years, but the time when many discover what sort of cricketer they are, and what they are going to be. Amir spent those years unable to play the sort of cricket that could have developed him further.

“People have to understand that age, rhythm… I had played consistently then and had a rhythm about my bowling, a confidence,” Amir told Cricket Monthly.

His return caused a stir. When he was picked for the Pakistan ODI team at the end of 2015, captain Azhar Ali and batter Mohammad Hafeez initially refused to join up with the squad, uncomfortable with his presence, although both later recanted and played.

When he was recalled to the Test team, ironically playing his first game back at Lord’s against England in May 2016, he was barracked from the terraces, tedious bores shouting, “No ball!” every time he bowled.

“When he came back, it was almost starting all over again,” says Arthur. “He had to learn to match the intensity, the tempo, the skill (he had before). The toll it took on him was huge. And yet what I saw was I saw a focused guy who just took it in his stride, and ultimately now he’s got the best out of himself.”

Amir seems contented with his lot now.

He views his years away as a blessing in some respects, largely because without them, he would not have met his wife, Narjis, who was part of his legal team. She is British, which allowed him to compete as a ‘home’ player in county cricket and the Hundred this year. The couple have three children and live in England.

Amir credits her with helping him return to cricket after his ban. “I’m the luckiest one that I have her in my life. She always tries to guide me,” he told Wisden this year. “For me, in 2010, everything was done, finished. When I came back in 2015, I was starting from zero. The five years were the toughest time in my life.”

Arthur isn’t far behind Narjis for influence on his career. “Him and I connected,” Arthur says. “You connect with a certain number of people in your coaching career. Once I connected with him and I heard exactly what had happened, I had absolutely no reservation (about picking him again). I saw a guy who just wanted to play, represent his country, and fulfil his potential.

“I’d like to think I gave him security. Hopefully, I was kind of a safety net for him, someone he could talk to about a lot of stuff.”

Amir rebuilt his career into something that the top one per cent of professional cricketers would be delighted with. From where he was, carrying around the stigma he had, it is extraordinary that he came back at all.

He retired from Test cricket in 2019, and then from all international cricket twice — first in 2020 and finally in 2024 — and now travels the world, as many cricketers do, playing for various franchises. He was one of the top bowlers at the Hundred this year, with his Trent Rockets side coming close to winning the whole thing. He has still got ‘it’, or at least a version of ‘it’, even if this ‘it’ isn’t quite the same ‘it’ as it was when he was 18.

“His skill is incredible,” says Arthur. “He’s still got that skill now. Sure, he’s refined it a little bit. He doesn’t have the pace he had. But in terms of his execution of what he wants to do, he’s magnificent.”

In our contemplation of the alternative reality where there was no spot-fixing, and Amir did not miss those four years and went on to have one of the all-time careers, perhaps we are guilty — not of overstating Amir’s pre-ban brilliance, but of assuming he would continue to be that good in the long term, of thinking it was sustainable.

Sport is littered with examples of athletes who peaked early and then could not live up to those standards. Cricket in Pakistan has a reputation for being chaotic, so even if he continued his otherworldly greatness, there is no guarantee his career arc would have been a steady ascension to the top.

But watching Pakistan’s flaying by England in the first Test at Headingley last week, and watching the 34-year-old Amir still bowl to a high level in the Hundred, and thinking back to just how exhilarating he was at 18, it is impossible not to feel slightly sad. Not to picture him still leading their attack in 2026, with 100 Tests and 500 wickets to his name. Not to think of what might have been. What should have been.

*This article was originally published in The New York Times on August 27, 2026