 Fallen hero
He was a tall, slightly built, soft-spoken young man with a toothy grin and restless feet. He must have been 16 or 17 when he shyly stood in the background and watched the State Bank team - of which his uncle Abid Zainulabuddin was the captain - at nets behind the bank’s local head office at Koti, Hyderabad. His own home was in a modest quarter of the city in the bylanes behind the bank, from where he walked to the nets through the rear entrance. He would bowl his leg breaks with much enthusiasm and some skill. Naturally, we never got to see him bat as he was not a member of our team, though he became its captain in later years.
Little did any of us realise then that this young man would one day play for India, delight the cricket world with his wristy strokeplay, and eventually become a successful captain. He was, however, soon making waves in domestic cricket, especially with his wonderful onside shots to balls pitched anywhere from outside the off stump to the legside, but nothing before his debut double century in the Duleep Trophy prepared us for the incredible start of three hundreds in a row to his Test career.
When he became an overnight hero, the media were full of stories about how he was a devout Muslim and devoted grandson, who was shattered by the death of his grandfather just before he made his Test debut. All the reports we read stressed his simplicity and modesty in the face of all the adulation that was now his. When after the first fine rapture of his magical start, he settled down into a more sedate tenure, he gradually found his feet in international cricket and came through as a young man with his head screwed firmly on his shoulders.
The Indian captaincy came to Azhar almost by accident, and it sat lightly upon his shoulders, until disaster struck on the South African tour. There he was a troubled man, in poor batting form, leading a losing team. He almost lost the Indian captaincy, but his fortunes changed dramatically in the home series against England, for which he was originally appointed captain only for one Test. (Or was it two Tests?) He never looked back after his glorious century at Eden Gardens, and what happened in the rest of the series is now history. It was the start of the most glorious phase of Azharuddin’s career.
Through the ups and downs of his eventful career, conflicting reports about the man did the rounds in the corridors of cricket. One side of him continued to be seen in a favourable light. He showed respect to seniors, cricketers and others, he exerted quiet authority over his team, and he still retained a reputation as the boy next door, but there were also occasional flashes of arrogance in the utterances he made retorting to criticism, there was this new image as a man of expensive tastes. And we all know where his career ended, after numerous comebacks and electrifying exhibitions of an unusual talent.
In the end, what haunts admirers and well-wishers of this brilliant cricketer is a poignant sense of what might have been. Just as his cricket fell short of greatness, thanks to his failure against genuine pace in adverse conditions, his life too was severely tested in the ultimate examination of a man - that of character. It is one of the tragedies of Indian cricket that someone who started out so decent and dignified should have gone out of the game unsung, unhonoured.
V Ramnarayan
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