Brief profile of Mohammad Azharuddin by Matthew Reed

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Player:

M Azharuddin

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DateLine: 8th December 2005

 

Every cricket fan has a decision to make on how they remember Mohammad Azharuddin. During the 1990’s many considered him to be the finest batsman in the world, and his seemingly effortless leg side strokeplay probably did more for the cliché of the wristy subcontinental batter than anybody else. Not even the arrival of Sachin Tendulkar seemed to overshadow or diminish his status. Although a Muslim in a mainly non-Islamic country, a century in his first three Tests rendered such a fact irrelevant, and the world knew they potentially had an all-time great on their hands. A near flawless 226 in the Duleep Trophy in January 1984 had earlier told Indian cricket to prepare for his elevation. As his career progressed, so his game grew to encompass strokes for all around the wicket. However, for much of the 1980’s, Azharuddin’s form mirrored that of the Indian team - a formidable opponent in India; an underachieving, defeatable opponent outside. Although English audiences still remembers his two centuries at Lords and Old Trafford with enormous pleasure (with the former seemingly being far better remembered than Graham Gooch’s career defining 333), he had turned the overseas corner in New Zeeland some five months earlier, when his 192 had completely overshadowed Ian Smith’s vicious 173 from no.9.

 

Azharuddin spent 1991 with Derbyshire, where he fell 150 runs of beating Donald Carr’s record season aggregate of 2,165. If illness hadn’t ruled him out of the last game of the season (played on a typically docile Chesterfield wicket) then few would have betted against him breaking the record. As well as the majesty of his batting (many at Grace Road reckoned his 212 against Leicestershire was worth the price of a membership, never mind a day ticket, alone) Azharuddin came across as humble and polite, and a man unaffected by his gifts or status. His brilliance as a fielder (in the days before intensive fielding drills were de rigour) also indicated a man who preferred working on his all-round game rather than resting on his batting laurels. However, as the years went by, the man himself proved more complicated than the simplicity of his cricket. Rumours began to surface that the quiet, religious man also had a taste for nightclubs (and the temptations to be found inside), although he would not have been the first prominent Test cricketer to have such interests. Although dropped from the Test side to tour New Zealand in 1999, many correctly ascertained that he’d be back, and he was comfortably ahead in his status as the most capped ODI player in history. Although retirement inevitably loomed, Azharuddin could look forward to being remembered as one of the most enjoyed batsman of modern times, and with career stats to die for.

 

However, by the time he had a poor Asian cup series in 2000, allegations of involvement in match fixing, (and suspicions of how Azharuddin afforded his extravagant lifestyle) had already publicly broken. Although the epicentre of the match fixing earthquake (and all other scandals a direct consequence of that) was obviously Hansie Cronje’s fall from grace, Azharuddin's involvement was arguably a bigger blow to cricket. Cronje was a capable batsman, and steady (if defensive) captain, unloved outside South Africa. His was cricket of the solid, respected, valuable kind. However, Azharuddin’s cricket was how a Shakespearian or Bollywood hero would have played the game. His banning for match fixing for life from the game he had given so much to was as much a tragedy as it was a disastrous blow to the game’s reputation. Cricket was forced to realise that a man who played cricket like a God was actually all too humanly weak, and that he had betrayed the game. Despite concerted legal efforts to overturn the ban, Azharuddin and his legal team were unsuccessful, and it’s impossible to see how his reputation will ever be anything but tarnished. Cricket lovers may choose to either ignore Azharuddin’s contribution to the game or to ignore the guilty verdict itself. What we may have to do is to say that where the private deeds of a man who is a great composer, writer or artist are largely ignored and seen separately from his work, so we have to do the same with Azharuddin, even if it’s impossible to imagine a worse cricketing crime that he could have committed.

 

December 2005

(Article: Copyright © 2005 Matthew Reed)