by Sumit Gangopadhyay
The legendary Indian batsman Vijay Hazare passed away on December 18, 2004.
The first Indian captain to win a Test match, Hazare scored 2192 runs at an excellent average of 47.65 with 7 hundreds. He was the first Indian batsman to score centuries in each innings of a Test match.
His Test feats are well known, including the two hundreds he scored against Australia at Adelaide. Here are some of his blazing deeds in first-class and other grades of cricket.
Hazare turned out for Poona against MCC in late 1933, and made an impression immediately by capturing four wickets with his medium pace, including Bryan Valentine and Arthur Mitchell. However, it was not a first-class fixture. Later, he made more headlines with his formidable batting feats through the next two decades.
In Ranji Trophy he represented Baroda, Central Provinces and Central India. In Pentagular he turned out for the Rest. It was for the Rest against the HIndus that he hit 309 out of a team total of 387 in the 1943-44 final.
One of the few Indian cricketers to achieve the double of 5000 runs and 500 wickets in first-class cricket, his bowling took the h but nevertheless he had career-best figures of 8 for 90. He belongs to a select league of Indian cricketers to have scored over 300 and also captured 8 wickets in an innings. And he also belongs to the rare breed of Indians with two triple hundreds, his highest score being 316 not out against Maharashtra.
In 1938 he toured England with Rajputana, and hit a hundred against Cambridge. There were three future Test cricketers in the Cambridge side, Norman Yardley, Paul Gibb and George Mann. In this very match, he also trapped Yardley leg before.
In the Lancashire League and Worsley Cup, he played 62 matches for Rawtensall scoring 2360 runs with two hundred sand 20 fifties, and captured 186 wickets with 20 five-fors. In 1949, he became the second cricketer to capture 1000 runs and 100 wickets in a Lancashire League season. If he had achieved it one match earlier, he would have been the first. Cec Pepper beat him to it.
He turned out for Mohun Bagan in Calcutta.
Earlier, BCCI used his name for age-group cricket tournament, but now the premier List A tournament is called the Vijay Hazare Trophy.
Translated from Bengali by Arunabha Sengupta