My Favorite Cricketer: Mohammad Azharuddin

Mohammad Azharuddin: One Of All-time Greatest Indian cricketers

Mohammad Azharuddin is my favorite cricketer of all time. I followed Mohammad Azharuddin keenly since the initial years of his illustrious career. There are quite a few cricketers I regard highly, but it is Azharuddin I liked the most.

The first thing I would like to write about Mohammad Azharuddin is his selflessness. Mohammad Azharuddin is one of few Indian cricketers who did not play for records. Some of the so called legends always play for their records. Azhar always kept the interest of team above his own records. He never bothered about records and fittingly played 99 test. He does not need 100th test match under his belt to prove his credentials. It was sad to see the career of a selfless cricketer end abruptly and unceremoniously in the backdrop of match fixing charges.

In my opinion, Mohammad Azharuddin as a cricketer was a blend of hard work and genius. He made a fairytale debut to his test career. He captured the imagination and fascination of the cricketing world when he scored three consecutive hundreds on his debut.

Mohammad Azharuddin was the best or among the best in every department. He was the best batsman in the Indian batting line-up across all formats of the game. In fact Azharuddin was one of the leading batsmen in the world during first part of his career. People may argue that Sunil Gavaskar was better than Azharuddin. Sunil Gavaskar might have been a better batsman in test cricket, but in one day cricket Azhar was ahead of Sunil Gavaskar. In later years, Sachin joined Azhar as the best batsman in the Indian team, and later as an opener Sachin became the most productive batsman of the Indian team.

Mohammad Azharuddin was inarguably the greatest Indian fielder of his time and arguably the greatest Indian fielder of all time. He was supremely fit, and rarely let the ball go past him. His throw to the stump was impeccable and he hardly ever missed the target. I remember vividly him running out Salim Malik throwing the ball from the boundary as Salim Malik had slowed down approaching the wicket taking the second run. The two other cricketers who could match Azhar's skill as fielder are Mohammad Kaif and Yuvraj Singh. These two cricketers are as great fielders as was Azharuddin, but they cannot aim at stump as sharply as Azharuddin did. Mohammad Azharuddin was also sharp catcher in slips. Some people regard Rahul Dravid as the best slip fielder, but let me assure you, Dravid does not even come near Azharuddin in terms of fielding, including at slip.

Mohammad Azharuddin is arguably one of the three greatest Indian captains of all time. In the recent times we have not seen or heard, of course Pataudi being the only exception who is talked as being a great captain, about a captain of Azhar's ability. It was Azhar's decision to promote Sachin to the opening slot and then persist with him as an opener that saw Sachin score those many one day hundreds. Before being promoted to the openings slot Sachin did not have a single hundred in one dayers in about 80 games. There are a couple of his decisions that comes to mind immediately. The one to get Sachin to bowl the last over of the famous match against South Africa when India narrowly won what was thought to be a lost cause is part of Indian cricket folklore. Probably, Dhoni is as good a captain as Azharuddin. I do not rate Sourav on par with Azharuddin as a captain. Sourav was hardly a good captain. It was the emergence of players like Sehwag and Zaheer Khan coupled with brilliance of some other players under Sourav saw Sourav succeed as captain. Moreover Sourav never won any major one day trophy. Azhar still has the distinction of winning most one day trophies for India. Sourav of course underachieved as a captain for the kind of talented players he had playing under him.

The only regret I have about Mohammad Azharuddin is that cricket has brought some changes in our hero as a person. One of the noticeable change in him is that he has not remained as devoted to offering prayers as he used to be in his early days as a cricketer.