Arunabha Sengupta
Another of the handful of Indian cricketing icons of the 1960s who promised to be way way better than what his end numbers demonstrated; and yet another whose legend is linked as much to his cricket as to the dashing debonair image and smouldering good looks.
Yes, Durani was handsome enough to play the hero in a Bollywood movie. In fact, he did so, pairing with Parveen Babi in BR Ishara’s Charitra.
Durani had the ability to turn the match with bat or ball, and occasionally did so.
He captured 8 wickets at Calcutta and 10 at Madras to help India defeat England in 1961-62. He took 6 for 73 to dismiss Bobby Simpson’s Australians for 174 in 1964-65.
Hence his famous question to Rohit Brijnath on the eve of the West Indies tour, “Tell me, when has India ever won a Test without me?”
Well, they had won a few, but Durani did play the pivotal role in those iconic victories of the early sixties. And being dropped for nearly half a decade hurt.
Not that he had blazed the turf from 1960 to 1966, averaging in the mid-20s with the bat and mid-30s with the ball, but he always looked like producing something special. Perhaps he could have been given a few more chances. But then 23 Tests are quite a few.
His figures remained unimpressive on return, while the back-to-back dismissals of Lloyd and Sobers at Port-of-Spain during India’s historic win entered folklore.
However, in between there were plenty of days of mediocrity.
As a batsman he was a dasher who could apparently hit sixes at will. He was indeed a big hitter — and could also be a fighter if his solitary Test hundred, against West Indies at Trinidad, is anything to go by.
However, his final figures of 1,202 runs at 25.04 are disappointing when measured against his talent. As are his 75 wickets at 35.42 apiece.
In First-Class cricket his numbers (8,545 runs at 33, 484 wickets at 26) were reasonably better. The Kabuliwalla, born in Afghanistan, he played for Rajasthan in the 1960s and became a mainstay—during the decade when they played the perennial bridesmaid to Bombay in Ranji Trophy.
As a left-arm spinning all-rounder, Bapu Nadkarni, whose career overlapped Durani’s for quite a while, ended with marginally better figures with the bat and far better ones with the ball. This is more relevant because Durani always promised to be a top-order batsman, something Nadkarni had no pretension to.
One also wonders if the legend of his ‘hitting sixes on demand’ is not a bit far-fetched. He hit 15 sixes in 29 Tests, and 7 of them came in the final 3 appearances. Perhaps the final three Tests, played at the big centres of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, with sudden spate of international success having plunged the country into cricket craziness, left a lasting impression and blessed this story with immortality.
Nevertheless, the ‘No Durani No Test’ protests at Kanpur in 1973 underlined the immense popularity of the man.
On his birthday many would have us believe he was India's answer to Sobers, who did not quite get his due. That perhaps ranks high on the list of parochial hyperboles...
Well, Rusi Surti ... and sometimes even Eknath Solkar have been called Poor Man's Sobers because of their being left-handed all-rounders.
However, strangely, Ravindra Jadeja, with performances towering head, shoulders, waist, knee, ankle over these men, gets the flak for evoking such comments.
The gold dust of time can never be underestimated.
Salim Durani was born on 11 Dec 1934.