Vijay Hazare
Encyclopedia
Vijay Samuel Hazare was an Indian cricket
player from the state of Maharashtra
. He captained
the Indian cricket team
in 14 matches between 1951 and 1953. In India's 25th Test match, nearly 20 years after India achieved Test status, he led India to her first ever Test
win (and the only victory under his captaincy) in 1951-52 against England at Madras, winning by an innings and eight runs in a match that began on the day that King George VI
died.
, Maharashtra in 1915, one of eight children of a schoolteacher.
Primarily a right-hand batsman, Hazare was also a right-hand medium-pace bowler. A "shy, retiring" man (according to Wisden
in 1952), it was widely thought that he was not a natural captain, and that his batting suffered as a result. His rival, Vijay Merchant
said that the captaincy prevented Hazare from becoming India's finest batsman: "It was one of the tragedies of cricket."
Even so, Hazare's Test record is very respectable: he amassed 2,192 runs in 30 Test matches with a batting average
of 47.65. His first-class record is even more impressive, with a batting average
of 58.38 for his 18,740 runs (highest first-class aggregate for an Indian player after Sunil Gavaskar
, Sachin Tendulkar
and Rahul Dravid
). He scored 60 first-class centuries (including 7 in Tests), the third highest for an Indian player (behind Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar
), and 10 first-class double centuries (including six during World War II
, when India was the only major cricket-playing country to continue holding its domestic first-class cricket competition without interruption).
His bowling record was more modest, and he took 595 first-class wicket
s (including 20 in Tests, and Donald Bradman
's wicket three times) at an bowling average
of 24.61. On the Indian domestic circuit, Hazare played for the Maharashtra
, Central India and Baroda
teams.
Some of his notable achievements include:
In retirement, he was for a short while an Indian Test cricket selector. He has been honoured with a trophy in his name, the Vijay Hazare Trophy
, a zonal-cricket tournament in India. He died in December 2004 following prolonged illness caused by intestinal cancer
.
He and Jasu Patel
were the first cricketers to be honoured with the Padma Shri
.
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
player from the state of Maharashtra
Maharashtra
Maharashtra is a state located in India. It is the second most populous after Uttar Pradesh and third largest state by area in India...
. He captained
Indian national cricket captains
This is a list of all cricketers who have captained Indian national cricket team at the international level. The list includes all Indian captains of men's, women's and youth cricket. India became a full member of the Imperial Cricket Conference on 31 May 1926...
the Indian cricket team
Indian cricket team
The Indian cricket team is the national cricket team of India. Governed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India , it is a full member of the International Cricket Council with Test and One Day International status....
in 14 matches between 1951 and 1953. In India's 25th Test match, nearly 20 years after India achieved Test status, he led India to her first ever Test
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...
win (and the only victory under his captaincy) in 1951-52 against England at Madras, winning by an innings and eight runs in a match that began on the day that King George VI
George VI of the United Kingdom
George VI was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death...
died.
Early life
Hazare was born in a working-class Marathi Christian Protestant family in SangliSangli
Sangli is a city in the state of Maharashtra of India. Sangli is known as the Turmeric city for its vast production of Turmeric. Sangli is situated on the banks of river Krishna and is the largest market place for Turmeric in Asia and houses many sugar factories, which it is also noted for...
, Maharashtra in 1915, one of eight children of a schoolteacher.
Primarily a right-hand batsman, Hazare was also a right-hand medium-pace bowler. A "shy, retiring" man (according to Wisden
Wisden
The Wisden Group was a group of companies formed by John Wisden & Co Ltd, publishers of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. As well as John Wisden & Co, the group included the The Wisden Cricketer magazine, Cricinfo – the world's highest traffic cricket website – and the Hawk-Eye computerised...
in 1952), it was widely thought that he was not a natural captain, and that his batting suffered as a result. His rival, Vijay Merchant
Vijay Merchant
Vijaysingh Madhavji Merchant , real name Vijay Madhavji Thakersey was an Indian cricketer. A right-hand batter and occasional right-arm medium pace bowler, Merchant played first class cricket for Mumbai cricket team as well as 10 Test matches for India between 1929 and 1951...
said that the captaincy prevented Hazare from becoming India's finest batsman: "It was one of the tragedies of cricket."
Even so, Hazare's Test record is very respectable: he amassed 2,192 runs in 30 Test matches with a batting average
Batting average
Batting average is a statistic in both cricket and baseball that measures the performance of cricket batsmen and baseball hitters. The two statistics are related in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages.- Cricket :...
of 47.65. His first-class record is even more impressive, with a batting average
Batting average
Batting average is a statistic in both cricket and baseball that measures the performance of cricket batsmen and baseball hitters. The two statistics are related in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages.- Cricket :...
of 58.38 for his 18,740 runs (highest first-class aggregate for an Indian player after Sunil Gavaskar
Sunil Gavaskar
Sunil Manohar "Sunny" Gavaskar is a former cricketer who played during the 1970s and 1980s for Bombay and India. Widely regarded as one of the greatest opening batsmen in cricket history, Gavaskar set world records during his career for the most Test runs and most Test centuries scored by any...
, Sachin Tendulkar
Sachin Tendulkar
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is an Indian cricketer widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is the leading run-scorer and century maker in Test and one-day international cricket. He is the only male player to score a double century in the history of ODI cricket...
and Rahul Dravid
Rahul Dravid
Rahul Sharad Dravid , is a cricketer in the Indian national team, of which he has been a regular member since 1996. He was appointed as the captain of the Indian cricket team in October 2005 and resigned from the post in September 2007. Dravid was honoured as one of the top-five Wisden Cricketers...
). He scored 60 first-class centuries (including 7 in Tests), the third highest for an Indian player (behind Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar
Sachin Tendulkar
Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is an Indian cricketer widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket. He is the leading run-scorer and century maker in Test and one-day international cricket. He is the only male player to score a double century in the history of ODI cricket...
), and 10 first-class double centuries (including six during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, when India was the only major cricket-playing country to continue holding its domestic first-class cricket competition without interruption).
His bowling record was more modest, and he took 595 first-class wicket
Wicket
In the sport of cricket the word wicket has several distinct meanings:-Definitions of wicket:Most of the time, the wicket is one of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at either end of the pitch...
s (including 20 in Tests, and Donald Bradman
Donald Bradman
Sir Donald George Bradman, AC , often referred to as "The Don", was an Australian cricketer, widely acknowledged as the greatest batsman of all time...
's wicket three times) at an bowling average
Bowling average
Bowling average is a statistic measuring the performance of bowlers in the sport of cricket.A bowler's bowling average is defined as the total number of runs conceded by the bowlers divided by the number of wickets taken by the bowler, so the lower the average the better. It is similar to earned...
of 24.61. On the Indian domestic circuit, Hazare played for the Maharashtra
Maharashtra cricket team
The Maharashtra cricket team is a domestic cricket team based in the Indian state of Maharashtra in the city of Pune. It is in the Plate Group of the Ranji Trophy...
, Central India and Baroda
Baroda cricket team
The Baroda cricket team is a domestic cricket team based in the city of Vadodara. The home ground of the team is the Moti Bagh Stadium on the palace grounds. The team is run by the Baroda Cricket Association. It has been one of the most successful teams in the Ranji Trophy in the new millennium...
teams.
Some of his notable achievements include:
- First Indian batsman to score a triple century in first class cricket (considering KS Duleepsinhji as an English cricketer)
- First Indian to score two triple centuries:
- the first, his highest score, was 316 not out for Maharashtra against Poona in 1939-40
- the second was 309 out of 387 for The Rest against The Hindus at Bombay in 1943-44. Despite his innings, Rest lost the match by an innings. It included a partnership of 300 with his brother, Vivek Hazare. Vijay scored 266 (88.6% of the partnership) of the 300 runs while Vivek contributed 21. Hazare scored 79.84% of his team's score, then a world record, and it is the second highest individual score in a losing cause. Rest's total is the smallest completed innings to contain a triple century.
- First Indian to score a century in each inningsInningsAn inning, or innings, is a fixed-length segment of a game in any of a variety of sports – most notably cricket and baseball during which one team attempts to score while the other team attempts to prevent the first from scoring. In cricket, the term innings is both singular and plural and is...
of a Test match (116 and 145 on successive days against the Australian cricket teamAustralian cricket teamThe Australian cricket team is the national cricket team of Australia. It is the joint oldest team in Test cricket, having played in the first Test match in 1877...
in AdelaideAdelaideAdelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
in 1947-48, which was the same team that became known as The InvinciblesThe Invincibles (cricket)The Australian cricket team in England in 1948 was captained by Don Bradman, who was making his fourth and final tour of England. The team is famous for being the first Test match side to play an entire tour of England without losing a match. This feat earned them the nickname of The Invincibles,...
) - Ironically, against England at Kanpur in 1951-52, Hazare also became the first Indian batsman to score a pair (a duck in both innings)
- First Indian player to score a century in three successive Test matches
- First Indian player to make fifty centuries in his first class career
- Highest partnership for any wicketWicketIn the sport of cricket the word wicket has several distinct meanings:-Definitions of wicket:Most of the time, the wicket is one of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at either end of the pitch...
in first-class cricketFirst-class cricketFirst-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...
(577 runRun (cricket)In the sport of cricket, a run is the basic unit of scoring. Runs are scored by a batsman, and the aggregate of the scores of a team's batsmen constitutes the team's score. A batsman scoring 50 or 100 runs , or any higher multiple of 50 runs, is considered a particular achievement...
s with Gul Mahomed for Baroda against Holkar in the final of the Ranji TrophyRanji TrophyThe Ranji Trophy is a domestic first-class cricket championship played in India between different city and state sides, equivalent to the County Championship in England and the Sheffield Shield in Australia...
at Baroda in 1947. This record stood for many years, and was only broken in 2006 by Kumar SangakkaraKumar SangakkaraKumar Sangakkara is a Sri Lankan, Sinhalese cricketer and the former captain of the Sri Lanka national cricket team. He is a left-handed top-order batsman...
and Mahela JayawardeneMahela JayawardeneDenagamage Proboth Mahela de Silva Jayawardene , known as Mahela Jayawardene, is the former captain of the Sri Lankan cricket team. He is a specialist batsman who has a Test average of over 50, and an ODI average in the 30s...
who put on 624 for Sri LankaSri Lankan cricket teamThe Sri Lankan cricket team is the national cricket team of Sri Lanka. The team first played international cricket in 1926–27, and were later awarded Test status in 1981, which made Sri Lanka the eighth Test cricket playing nation...
against South AfricaSouth African cricket teamThe South African national cricket team represent South Africa in international cricket. They are administrated by Cricket South Africa.South Africa is a full member of the International Cricket Council, also known as ICC, with Test and One Day International, or ODI, status...
. - First Indian player to complete 1000 Test Runs
Vijay Hazare Trophy
Vijay Hazare Trophy was started in 2002-03 as a limited-over domestic competition involving state teams from the Ranji Trophy plates. It is named after the famous Indian cricketer Vijay Hazare....
, a zonal-cricket tournament in India. He died in December 2004 following prolonged illness caused by intestinal cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
.
He and Jasu Patel
Jasu Patel
Jasubhai Motibhai Patel was an off-spinner who played Test cricket for Indian cricket team. His fame lies entirely on a single match against Australia where he took 14 wickets.-Early days:...
were the first cricketers to be honoured with the Padma Shri
Padma Shri
Padma Shri is the fourth highest civilian award in the Republic of India, after the Bharat Ratna, the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan...
.
External links
- Obituary (The HinduThe HinduThe Hindu is an Indian English-language daily newspaper founded and continuously published in Chennai since 1878. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it has a circulation of 1.46 million copies as of December 2009. The enterprise employed over 1,600 workers and gross income reached $40...
, 19 December 2004) - Obituary (The TimesThe TimesThe Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, 20 December 2004) - Obituary (The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, 20 December 2004)