Salim Parvez

The record-breaking feats of Younis Khan, who became the country’s highest Test run-getter, whilst batting against England, in UAE, has brought him, deservedly, in comparison with Pakistan’s three greatest batsmen – Hanif Mohammed (1951-69), Javed Miandad (1975-96) and Inzamam-ul-Haq (1991-2007). Amongst this elite group, the great Hanif Mohammed, soon to celebrate his 81st birthday in Karachi, represented the first master class of batsmanship of his country. Despite a number of health setbacks in recent years, including cancer of the liver in 2013 and a minor stroke in 2014, he refuses to go down without a fight. The presence of Hanif Mohammed at the batting crease remained a sight of great assurance and relief for his teammates and cricket lovers in Pakistan, for almost two decades. Invariably, it was Hanif's rock-solid defense upon which, Pakistan's almost every formidable total was built. His deeds with the bat are legendary: he was simply his country's first champion batsman, and to this day is regarded as the most consistent opening batsman in the short history of Pakistan's cricket. The best known of the famous Mohammed brothers, Hanif held most of his country's batting records than any other Pakistani batsman, before his controversial exit in 1969. In his distinguished career, he also had the honor of leading his country in 11 Test matches. The story of the Mohammed family is virtually the story of Pakistan cricket. The impact of one of cricket's most famous families, ran into the second generation, in the form of Hanif's son Shoaib Mohammed. In the 27-year period (1951-78), amazingly, at least one of the Mohammed brothers was present in the Pakistan line-up in the Test matches. Hanif was born in Manavadar, an Indian township of Junagadh on the fourteenth day of holy month Ramadan, or in other words on December 21, 1934. He was the middle of five sons (discounting one brother and a sister who both died in their teenage) born to a professional class parent, who both excelled at ball games at an amateur level. Their father Sheikh Ismail Mohammed, a hotel-keeper in Junagadh died prematurely in 1948, after the family's migration to Karachi. A great admirer of Australian captain, Lindsay Hassett, Ismail himself was a good club cricketer. Their mother, Ameer Bee, who passed away in 1995 at the age of 85, was a great influence on the sports-mad clan. She was a badminton champion in India and also dominated the regional table-tennis and carrom scene.Ameer Bee made sure her boys had every possible opportunity to develop their sporting talents. That resulted in her five sons, Wazir, Raees, Hanif, Mushtaq and Sadiq, all playing first-class cricket. Apart from Raees Mohammed, who acted as 12th Man against India at Dhaka in 1954-55, the other four went on to win Test caps. Even before the family left Junagadh for Karachi, young Hanif was busy learning his trade on the concrete terrace by the electric lights, in front of his parents’ house. He would team up with his brothers to participate in tennis ball "Test Matches that would stretch to almost a week in search of a decision. Their father would shave the mat off on one side of tennis balls to produce a delivery which could swing and provided bowlers with a better opportunity to compete on equal terms. It was during these encounters that the brothers learned to keep their heads down and their elbows up, as a lost ball could mean a long search in the darkness. Slogging was simply not on, under the circumstances, and this is where the family trademark, of doggedness, was born. Hanif received a good deal of coaching from Abdul Aziz, himself a wicket-keeper who represented All-India against Jack Ryder's Australian team in the unofficial ‘Test’ at Calcutta in 1936. The first area that needed attention was Hanif's tendency to play back too much and he could not help spooning the ball while playing defensively on the on-side. Abdul Aziz helped him to get rid of the rough edges and Hanif learned how to defend his wicket, by playing forward as well as the back. The hook and the pull were never his best strokes and because of his frailness, his drives also lacked punch. On Master Aziz's death in 1978, his most famous pupil wrote, "He was the school cricket coach at Sind Madrassa, and now when I look back I realize what amount of hard work he put into my game."Throughout his career, Hanif had an almost non-existent back lift of the bat and essentially remained a back-foot player. It was at this stage of his career that he developed a peculiar habit of touching his cap and before his crouch would go through the motion of making a cross over his chest before stooping to face the bowler. It was his own way of concentrating. In Karachi, Hanif started to outshine his brothers and dominate school cricket. Wearing a red cap with a camel crest, the school emblem, he scored a record-breaking inning of 305 in seven and half hours stay for Sind Madrassa-Tul-Islam, on a school matting in Rubie Shield, an inter-school tournament. His record was overtaken by Ikram Elahi, the very next year. Hanif also represented the Karachi Gymkhana and the Karachi Parsee Institute. It was during a Relief Fund match against the Punjab XI, in which he scored 93 n.o. against Khan Mohammed and Aamir Elahi, he caught an eye of his future captain, A.H.Kardar. In the Sind Pentangular Tournament, he notched up three hundred in as many matches. He was not yet seventeen when picked to tour England in 1952 for the Pakistan Eaglets. The tour was arranged in order to provide the youngsters with an opportunity to learn and iron out their batting and bowling techniques. The party spent fifteen days at the former Surrey fast bowler Alf Gover's coaching school. After watching him at the nets, Gover was impressed and added: "I am not going to try to coach this boy and my tip is that you do not let anybody else try it either. He has got everything. He is a natural. All I did was, advise him how to make the best of his perfect technique in the middle." Later in the same year, Hanif was opening for Pakistan against the MCC at Bagh-i-Jinnah, Lahore with Nazar Mohammed, twice his age. Nazar has a vivid memory of their first partnership, "When I looked at this frail looking sixteen-year old, I did not think he could cope at this level and I would deliberately take a run off either the fifth or the final ball of the over to keep him away from the strike. But after a little while, to my amazement, Hanif came into the line of the ball with great confidence, that left me in no doubt that he was capable of looking after himself." The youngster, unused to the natural grass surface managed to bat for almost three hours for his 26 in a ninety-six run opening stand, on his first-class debut. His contribution to the famous win in the second 'unofficial' Test at Karachi was a four-hour stay that yielded 64 runs and played a part in his country's successful 285-run chase. From that series onwards, Hanif was to play the role of a sheet-anchor and used to complement the stroke players, through his great resources of concentration. He was never to be heard complaining about his responsibilities and always followed the captain's instruction. Hanif was proving to be a cricket prodigy in the best sense of the word. He was not yet 18 when he accompanied the Pakistan team on their first official tour to India (1952-53). He opened the tour with a hundred in each innings, the youngest ever to perform this feat, in the tourists' fixture at the holy city of Amritsar. Later on the tour with an unbeaten double hundred against Bombay Cricket Association XI, Hanif easily topped the tour averages. Very few could have painted a better picture of the little opener than Ray Robinson: "When Hanif Mohammed comes in to bat for Pakistan there appears to be little more of him than a sun-helmet, a pair of pads and a dark shadow in between. Somewhere in the darkness under the helmet's brim, two brown eyes focus with burning intensity on the ball approaching through the heat-shimmering air. The helmet tilts forward as his head goes down to watch the last feet of the ball's bounce from the baked wicket to the bat. Every line of his neat figure denotes the concentrated attention to the ball necessary to score a double-century at 17 or any other age." In his very first Test at New Delhi, he scored 51 in four hours in the presence of Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, but his efforts were in vain as Pakistan suffered an innings defeat. During the third Test at Bombay, he shared a gallant partnership with Waqar Hasan, that almost saved the game for Pakistan. It was after Hanif's six-hour stay for 96 runs, that prompted captain A.H.Kardar to relieve the youngster of the wicket-keeping duties. There was a general feeling in the Pakistan camp that Hanif would be better off concentrating on his foremost task. Too much was being asked from him, as he would walk out to open the innings, carrying sore hands as a result of his work behind the stumps, which invariably had slipped to sub-standard on the tour. From that day on Hanif would only keep wickets in emergency and was left to devote all his physical and mental energies to batting. It was during the Indian tour that he was dubbed as the "The Little Master", a tag that to this day is fondly associated with his name. From the very formative years, his teammates had noticed that it was an impossible task for them to bring Hanif to talk about his batting. He was reluctant to share his methodology and approach on the subject with anyone. Hanif sat for his matriculation exams before the Pakistan team sailed to England for the 1954 tour. Although he achieved little in terms of statistics in the four-match series, he topped the batting averages and showed signs of a rapidly improving opening batsman, who could frustrate the best of bowlers with his water-tight defense. In the first Test at Lord's, Hanif displayed an...

Salim Parvez

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