Great batsmen often suspend the reverted eye, the whooping past, and the anticipated future. They are wont to enter a timeless present, just perfect in their manner and idiom, and open a sphere that time could forget. Their generous art reminds us, in the process, its content, by what it does in us — to suspend the desire to be elsewhere, and release us from the spiral of ourselves.
No wonder why great batsmen are judged by their capacity to take our breath, self, and time away — all at once. You just stare frozen in time, caught in their web — a lacework of their genius. So much so, you will never ever take your eyes from that vision.
Think of Sachin Tendulkar, or Brian Lara, on your TV screen. Think of Ricky Ponting. Think of Jacques Kallis, or Younis Khan. Think of Rahul Dravid. Think of Steve Smith. Think of Joe Root et al.
And… think of a Master of yore, Vijay Samuel Hazare — a great batsman and gentleman — and, you will be able to unfold a new world of unending beauty — a contemplation beyond time, or imagination. A world you’d have known: a world that flows like a stream of thought to radiate beauty, a development of the whole. A batsman for all time, yes, Hazare’s art was ageless — modern as modern can be — of art and grammar, all with a charm of its own.
Hazare was a complete batsman. He was a man with a mission too: to revel in any aspect of the game. Divined as he was with a fervent temper, consistency of approach, and wholesome reliance on his own talent, Hazare was a go-getter with a flexible touch. His defence was stable, a bedrock of purpose; his stroke-play was original and fulsome. They combined to endow both substance and vigour to his blossoming as one of the most prolific run-getters in Indian cricket. This wasn’t all. Hazare, who once took bowling lessons from leg-spin legend, Clarrie Grimmett, was, in fact, a proficient competitor with the new/old ball, with his away-swingers, and a secure bet in the field as well.
There was a happy coincidence too. Hazare, a batsman in the classical mould, had a great contemporary of equal ability — the difference being of degree. His name: Vijay Merchant. And, the fervid path of record-breaking exploits the productive twosome achieved is a high watermark in cricket annals. The duo was attuned to the same melody — of the ball being caressed with a touch of class. If Hazare was the man behind creativity, Merchant was the lyric to it, and vice versa. Such was their domination of an era, which was sadly troubled by history’s most distressed times — Adolf Hitler’s blitzkrieg.
Hazare made an uneventful entry into the game. He did not, therefore, influence anybody. Came a Ranji Trophy match, in 1939-40, and Hazare notched up an unbeaten 316 for Maharashtra against Baroda — incidentally, the first three-figure knock on India’s domestic cricket graph. Ten years later, in the 1949-50 Pentangular Final, Hazare again wrote his own miracle script. The Hindus, led by Merchant, had piled up a mammoth 581 for 5 declared. Hazare’s Rest, dismissed for a paltry 133, with Hazare himself contributing a combative half-century, had to follow-on. In the second essay, the Rest began to reel under pressure. When the score was reading a dismal 62 for 5, Hazare was joined in by his brother, Vivek, who was willing to hold the fort, at one end. As he kept the bowlers at bay, Vijay chiselled his way for runs. A great battle soon began to take shape.
Gradually, the stand for the sixth wicket produced 300 runs, in almost even time, with Vijay accounting for 266 vis-à-vis Vivek’s courageous 26. It was nothing short of a magnificent solo performance. The innings ended, when Vijay was dismissed after he had reached 309, in a total of 387. The Rest sure lost the encounter, not its pride. For Hazare, it was an encore of sorts. Two years earlier, Vijay, while playing for Baroda against Holkar, had made it into the record books with a colossal partnership in first-class cricket. Partnered by Gul Mohammed [319], Hazare [288] had been the beacon in an alliance of 577 runs for the fourth wicket — a mammoth record.
India’s maiden tour of Australia, in 1947-48, was Hazare’s watershed. His tryst with destiny was complete when he scored 116 and 145 in the Adelaide Test — the first Indian to attain the signal distinction. His run-aggregate in the five-Test series was a grand 429 — a vindication of his temporal ability against the likes of Ray Lindwall, Keith Miller, Colin McCool, Ernie Toshack et al. His roseate effort did not go unnoticed. As the Aussie captain, Sir Don Bradman, observed, “India has produced many attractive batsmen who can hold their heads high in any company, and of those I have seen none gave me more joy than Hazare.” They’re not mere words, but gems, equivalent to winning the Nobel Prize in cricket. For one primal reason. The Don wasn’t known for being ‘game’ to easy plaudit, or praise.
Hazare was a gentle player — a gentler human being. His batting was all dignity. He was an elegant proponent of the drive, the pull, which is otherwise a rasping shot. He often executed such blazing shots with the cool precision of a surgeon. He also played the cut, the flick off his legs, and the delicate leg-glance, with finery. He was respected for his free-stroking expertise. He could dissect any field, set for him, with computerised congruity.
There was a time when Hazare was deemed as Indian cricket’s greatest hope — more so, when the chips were down. He would often bloom to the full, as much as the blossoming flower to the warm gleam of the sun, in a crisis. He was, indeed, a batsman cut out for the repair, or restoration, job — a plumber with the artistic element in him [Dravid had something of Hazare in his game and mind: the same elegance, feline touch of class and gloss, sound technique, and temperament, and an innate knack to playing the right shot at the right time]. In sum, Hazare’s forte was keyed to steadying the innings, without fuss, or panic. He was the archetype of consistency — one, who played the game in the right spirit without his emotions getting the better of his logical mindset.
Hazare, who had the unique distinction of captaining India in her first-ever triumph, in Tests, against England, at Madras [now Chennai], in 1952, exactly 20 years after the country’s debut in international cricket, during a career spanning two decades, made 17,659 runs [57 hundreds; 57.90 average]. His Test record was as cogent: 30 Tests; 2,192 runs; 7 hundreds; 164 highest score; average 47.65.
In terms of hundreds per completed innings, Hazare compares quite favourably with some of the best in the business: 18.2 per cent vis-à-vis Bradman’s 39.07 per cent. However, it was only the lack of continuous cricket that prevented him from climbing the upper, far-higher echelons of sheer statistical superiority of a Colin Cowdrey, or Dennis Amiss, for example, whose cricket lives were almost uninterrupted. It, therefore, gave them more innings, more opportunities.
The big thing is, no amount of critical evaluation can detract from the merits of Hazare’s contribution to the game. His batsmanship was poetic — of wisdom that enchanted the heart. It was a song that crooned in his mind — to enchant every cricket enthusiast’s soul. Most importantly, it was also something that dwelled in the shadow of god.
It still does, in memory, and in tune with Kahlil Gibran’s capital aphorism — that “genius is but a robin’s song at the beginning of a slow spring,” or, in Hazare’s exemplar, the sound of the bat meeting the ball.
— First published in The Hindu
