Vijay Hazare will go down in history as one of the greatest cricketers to wear the Indian blazer
18-Dec-2004Vijay Hazare will go down in history as one of the greatest cricketers to wear the Indian blazer. He died today at the age of 89, after a prolonged illness. Raj Singh Dungarpur, a cricket aficionado with a keen sense of history, who also played against Hazare towards the end of his career, shared his memories with Anand Vasu:
Vijay Hazare: one of the titans of Indian cricket© Cricinfo
You can safely say that Vijay Hazare stands very tall in the long line of great Indian cricketers, from 1932 to 2004. And if you pick out the five best Indian batsmen of all time, Hazare would be in the first three. About that I have no doubt.As a batsman, there were several things that made him special. The first was his grip. The manner in which he held the bat, hands spread slightly apart, made him different. He had great hands, and could move them up or down the handle, like a flute player. This meant that he could make minor adjustments to ensure that the correct hand dominated, depending on the stroke he played. The second thing was the long stride he took forward. This meant that he almost had to hop twice to get back to his stance when he had taken a full stretch forward.He had an impregnable defence and a wide array of strokes. And remember, he played his cricket on uncovered wickets, and lost ten years to the war. You have to keep this in mind when you compare his record with that of other Indian cricketers. In his crisis-management abilities, I think he can be compared to Steve Waugh. The way he handled people in a crisis spoke volumes of the man.I remember bowling to him – on matting wickets that made even medium-fast or fast-medium bowlers look good – and I always thought he had an unfair bat. The good balls you bowled to him somehow seemed to find the middle of the bat. Thus, in some way or the other, many of his strokes were a product of playing a lot of cricket on matting. This was terribly unfair! The only other person I can think of that compared to him in this light was England’s Ken Barrington.As a mark of his fierce concentration, you need only to look at two examples. Firstly, his ability to make runs even when his team were in tatters at 0 for 4 at Headingley in 1952. Secondly, the separate centuries he scored against Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller in 1947-48. But there is a story that Polly Umrigar once told me that illustrates a point about his concentration.There was a time when Hazare and Umrigar batted together. It was against AH Kardar’s Pakistan team in 1952-53. Both batsmen were in their nineties, but Umrigar got to his century first. Then, somewhat relieved to reach his century, Umrigar signalled to the dressing-room to bring some water. “Your calling for water now has disturbed my concentration,” said Hazare, suggesting that Umrigar could have waited for his senior partner to reach his own century before asking for water.”I felt small and apologised,” Umrigar told me. Such was the intense concentration of the man. And today batsmen out in the middle can tell you where in the stands their wives or girlfriends are sitting!People talk about the fact that Hazare did not like to lift the ball. But there is one incident I have heard about so much, it is worth repeating. I can’t be 100% sure because I was not there, but the story goes that Hazare was nearing 300 and Chandu Sarwate was bowling to him from the Churchgate End at the Brabourne Stadium. Realising that he needed to hurry, he lifted the ball straight back over the bowler’s head and it pinged the sightscreen! And they say he couldn’t lift the ball …Apart from his batting, he was a very useful bowler. Don’t forget he took Sir Don Bradman’s wicket twice in the 1947-48 series. But his batting took such a heavy toll on him that Hazare never gave his bowling the time and attention it needed.As a person, he was mild-mannered, a man of few words. Dattu Phadkar once told me, “We didn’t listen to Hazare enough. Perhaps this was because he was so mild-mannered. Had we listened to him, we would have won at least three Tests in times when we won nothing.” He came from a humble background and was a God-fearing Christian. As far as I know, he tried his best to attend Sunday mass for a long time. He was also very family-oriented, and the fruits of that were there to see. Since the time that Hazare became very ill, his grandson Kunal took care of him like no-one else could have.When we opened Polly’s Bar & Diner, in honour of Umrigar, I was drawn aside. “I learned all my batting from the two Vijays – Hazare and Merchant. Yet, there’s no portrait or photograph of Hazare in the bar. How then can I call it my bar,” Umrigar asked me. Such was the impression Hazare had made on him.