Mohammed Azharuddhin

Azar was banned from playing first class cricket as he admitted that he fixed 3 matches against England becoming the third player in cricket’s history to be banned for match fixing. This drastically would have reduced his number of fans following and no one will disagree the fact that he deserves a negative popularity ahead of the positive one as he has done something which affects the nation’s popularity. He has got back enough for his match fixing sin as we all know that he was banned for life time, still if its not enough, he lost his son, the final settlement for being the national traitor.  Forget about his disastrous end. Its time for us to recall his positives alone.

                   If  you make a list of  top 10 Batsmen India has ever produced or the list of top 5 captains India has ever had, you cannot omit his name. Azarhuddin is both technically and statistically a world class captain. His batting was not good but great. He is more like Laxman, a wrist player. One of the greatest wrist players of cricket. There is no one better than him in wrist flicking the ball. The match fixing issue shadowed his greatness, otherwise the 1991 Wisden Cricketer of the year would have been spoken as high as Gavaskar or Tendulkar. He could have been the second batsmen on earth to score 10,000 ODI runs after Sachin if something like that did not happen. And no one who made an international debut in 1984 would have dreamt of a 10,000 in odis.

                 Azar was undoubtedly one of the top 3 or 4 greatest batsmen in the world during his period. He was both a shorter format and a longer format specialist. His First class record was so good that even after playing 229 first class matches he had an average of 52. He is one among the very few Indian batsman to score 50+ centuries in first lass matches, and yes he scored 54 centuries with 226 as his highest innings score in the 20 year long First class career. Though he wasn’t able to score a double ton in test cricket his presence in the team was always required for India as we had a lot of issues regarding the batting in 90’s before the emergence of Dravid and Ganguly. In tests, he has an average of 45 which is too good for a No.5 batsman, as good as Laxman of today .He holds the world record of scoring 3 centuries in  row in his first three Test matches. He is one among the very few to end the test career with a century. To be specific he started with a century and ended with a century. Through out his career he scored 22 test centuries in 99 tests.

                         Now its time to highlight his shorter format achievements . He has done few things which no other Indian did and he has done so many things which only few other Indians did as far as One day cricket is concerned. Maintaining an average of 40 for 432 List A matches is not a joke. His 156 catches in oneday international cricket was a world record. He was the second highest run getter in ODIs(9378) for a long period. His highest score is 153 not out in ODIs. His 62 ball hundred against Newzealand in 1998 was the fastest by an Indian for 11 years till Sehwag bettered it(60 balls).

        I can’t finish this article without writing a paragraph on his captaincy. Azar has captained India during most of the 90s and has created a big impact as a captain. His 14 test match wins as a captain was a national record until Ganguly surpassed it. He has lead India to 103 odi victories which is an unbroken Indian record till date.

           He has done a lot to his team.He has done a lot to cricket.Undoubtedly he is a legend. Few hundred thousand dollars tempted him. He betrayed his mother land. Undoubtedly he is a traitor.To conclude he is a good cricketer though not a great human.Hope he becomes a better human after the bitter experiences of loosing his goodwill and  his son.