by Arunabha Sengupta
Gloucestershire is a county that invokes images of grandeur, majesty and elegance in perfect cover drives.
Wally Hammond batted for them, and when he retired in stepped Tom Graveney. Class flowed across the ground, especially through the covers.
And in the 1970s, Zaheer Abbas walked into the large shoes as if they had been made to order for his exclusive use.
Zaheer drove like a dream, and the covers were his favourite route.
Like Hammond, he also liked to score huge hundreds.
The similarities went further. It is perhaps not coincidental that both the batsmen had biographies penned by David Foot.
In Zed, the book on Zaheer’s life, Foot underlines the likeness between the two legends. “As a psychological study (Zaheer is) complex in the same way that Wally Hammond was. Both saved their eloquence for the crease; both were withdrawn and defensive. Both engendered enormous respect and both opted for a privacy that did not come easily in a cricket dressing room.”
However, it must not be concluded that Zaheer had the same melancholy strain that dogged Hammond throughout his life. Indeed, Foot makes it perfectly clear after the above quoted paragraph: “There, I would suggest, the comparison ends. Hammond could be surly and cruelly dismissive. Zed’s personality is altogether sweeter.”
While his driving on the pitch was legendary, the same behind the steering wheel was strikingly scary. Frank Twistleton, a former Chairman of Gloucestershire, once remarked, “He is the worst that I’ve ever known. Once he took me from the team hotel near Marble Arch to the Oval. I’ve never been so terrified in my life. He drove very slowly — but his head was everywhere.”
In Tests Zaheer got 5,062 runs at 44.79 with 12 hundreds—record aggregate for Pakistan until Javed Miandad went past him. What is surprising, however, is the remarkable difference between his home and away figures.
2444 runs at 58.19 at home, 841 at 56.16 in England, 1777 at 31.73 elsewhere.
He was a poor traveller and cannot, therefore, be classed in the same league as the greatest.
The Pakistani and Indian fans of that era tend to disagree—mainly because like most cricket fans they characteristically go by what they saw, and thereby ignore what they did not see.
Zaheer in the sub-continent was most often in the midst of gluttonous bouts of run-feasts. With live telecast freshly available, these images made lasting impression.
During the 1982-83 series against India, he stroked his way to 215 in the first Test at Lahore, getting to his much celebrated hundredth first-class century—the only man to do so from the subcontinent, the first non-Englishman apart from Don Bradman and Glenn Turner. He celebrated with 186 at Karachi and 168 at Faisalabad. Pakistan won the series 3-0 and the bespectacled maestro plundered 650 runs at 130.
In the One Day Internationals contested during the tour, he plundered 3 hundreds in succession at Multan, Lahore and Karachi.
In the end several Indian players started to exclaim: “Zaheer, ab bas”
He did not have the same patience with the centuries of others though. In Bangalore, 1983, Zaheer, in his first Test as captain, took his fielders off the ground in protest as Sunil Gavaskar batted on during the twenty mandatory overs to complete a meaningless hundred. He came back only when told that Pakistan would forfeit the match.
While he was the manager, the Pakistan team marched off yet again, protesting the allegation of ball tampering by Darrell Hair at The Oval in 2006. And this time they did forfeit the Test.
By many accounts he was modest and low key off the field, unusually so given the glamour and glitz surrounding the cricketers in the subcontinent. I had been induced to write so in my pen-portrait in of the man in 2013. And then I contacted him on whatsapp to ask where I could send the article. Zaheer provided his email address.
It ran asianbradman____@______
Well … the article was already written.
However, he was a delight to watch when in full flow and one of the batting legends of the subcontinent.
Zaheer Abbas was born on 24 July 1947.