Today Mohammed Azharuddin is one run away from attaining a landmark – that of senior citizenship. He celebrated his 59th birthday with the family members of tennis star Sania Mirza.
His son Asaduddin is married to Sania’s sister Anam. It was Sania’s three-year-old son Izhaan who helped the former Indian captain to cut the birthday cake.
Azharuddin has had a long and chequered career on the cricket field and off it – as an administrator and as a politician. Without a doubt, he ranks among the best batters ever produced by Hyderabad and by India. No bowler of his days knew how to control his strokeplay. They found it difficult to figure out his strengths and weaknesses. He remained an enigma throughout his cricket career and he continues to be completely inscrutable even today as a cricket administrator.
The first time I covered a match in which Azharuddin was playing and watched him batting was in 1981 when he played in his debut series in the Ranji trophy. He was then 18 years old. Before the series began one of my senior colleagues who was a correspondent of The Indian Express told me: “Watch that youngster Azharuddin. He is going to play for India one day.” How right he was. Azharuddin was destined for big deeds.
Over the next few years, I covered several more matches in which he played along with the top-notch players of Hyderabad such as Shivlal Yadav, M V Narasimha Rao, Arshad Ayub, Vijay Mohan Raj, Khalid Abdul Qaiyum, Shahid Akbar, Abdul Azeem, Rajesh Yadav, Kawaljit Singh and others.
In December 1984, I covered a Ranji trophy match between Hyderabad and Andhra at Machilipatnam in which Azhar scored a century in both innings. He was going from strength to strength back then and the national selectors could no longer afford to ignore this blossoming talent. As expected, soon after that match he was selected in the Indian team.
Azhar made his Test debut against England which was touring India in the 1984-85 season. And what a start it was. Three centuries in a row in his first three Tests. He arrived on the international cricket scene with a bang. Over the course of time, records tumbled in a heap as he flicked, cut and drove the ball to all parts of the ground and no bowler escaped punishment. Former Indian skipper S Venkataraghavan said that Azhar had the best wrists in world cricket. Mike Atherton and Angus Fraser, both former players, acclaimed Azharuddin’s genius.
Azharuddin became the captain of the Indian team in 1989. The day he was first appointed captain of India under the helm of the Selection Committee Chairman Raj Singh Dungarpur, I was covering a match in Secunderabad. Around tea time there was a phone call from my head office in Chennai that since Azharuddin had been appointed captain of India, I should immediately write a 3000-word article about him.
I hurried down from the press box and found Azhar. He was sitting on a chair surrounded by autograph seekers. I managed to squeeze myself into a chair near him and began firing my questions. He was a tongue-tied man back then and he answered each question with one word. In between there would be onlookers interrupting with pats on his back and words like: “Mubarak Azhar Bhai. Please, ek autograph,” and so on. In between this chaos, I managed to ask him about five questions before he was called away for a meeting.
So in response to my five questions, I had got five words. These would have to be stretched out to 3000!! It was a tall order but I went back to my office and began working on it. I padded up to his answers with facts and figures and quotes from other players. After two days of work, I managed to complete a 3000-word story.
Over more than a decade, right until his career ended with the controversial match-fixing allegations, I interacted with him many times. The match-fixing controversy took everyone by surprise. Those of us who knew him from his young days felt that due to his simple nature, he was incapable of misdeeds. But the BCCI launched a probe through the CBI and based upon the findings, he was banned for match-fixing.
The disease was rife in those days and Hansie Cronje the captain of South Africa admitted his guilt before he died in a plane crash. Several others were also under the scanner and were also banned. Years later the A.P. High Court ruled against the decision and directed the BCCI to lift the ban on Azhar. But by then Azhar’s career was over.
In recent times he has been in controversy again as President of the Hyderabad Cricket Association. The fighting between the President and other office-bearers has created a dark phase of cricket administration in Hyderabad. When and how will it all end? What will be the outcome? These are million-dollar questions to which there are no clear cut answers. One hopes, for the sake of the young players of Hyderabad, that the clouds will lift soon and the sun will shine again on Hyderabad cricket.
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