CRICKET
Little Master and the
wall of defiance
P
akistan lost its first truly great sports icon last
Thursday barely a month after the demise of arguably, the greatest philanthropist in modern history,
Abdul Sattar Edhi.
Hanif Mohammad passed away following a three-year
battle with lung cancer at the Agha Khan Hospital in Karachi at the age of 81.
Today’s generation has scant idea, if at all, of how Pakistan, a cricket-mad country of nearly 200 million people,
was hard-pressed to survive the odds when it won the
full Test status five years into winning the independence
in 1947.
Virtually unbeknownst to them, the title of ‘Little Master’
that has long been associated with Sachin Tendulkar,
and before him, Sunil Gavaskar, was first bestowed on
their diminutive-like Hanif Mohammed. This explains
why any number of obit writers have had to use the prefix “original” to draw the distinction.
It is par for the course to trot out statistics to augment
a sportsman’s worth when they wind down to a close.
However, this remains little more than cold statistics in
Hanif’s case, who had such mastery over his craft that
bowlers would often come to grief, trying to dislodge him.
One of five Pakistanis in the International Cricket Coun-
cil’s Hall of Fame, Hanif’s 17-year career (1952-1969)
featured only 55 Tests probably, just a third of what a
regular modern Test player may get a shot at with an
average two decimal points short of 44. If ever, figures
did not quite tell the story, this was it!
When a still green cricket nation began its quest to meet
the challenge posed by the imperial cricket nations, it
fell upon Hanif to anchor the ship right at the top of
the order and he did this with such amazing patience,
perseverance, commitment and consistency that Pakistan held its own against all odds, despite the lack of
individual stars, apart from the charismatic pacer Fazal
Mehmood.
Indeed, Pakistan impressed on its first tour to England in
1954, becoming the only Test nation to beat the ‘mother
country’ on a maiden tour. Hanif had a stellar role to play
in most victories with his characteristic defence that often dented the confidence of the opposite bowlers. It is
a measure of the man that decades after he hung up the
boots in 1969, Pakistan continues to struggle to find a
reliable opener, much less a pair!
Talking of Hanif inevitably, takes you down the road of
marathons. But one of those marathons spending a
minute short of a thousand (some historians dispute this
40 | BOOM