Mohammad Azharuddin, The Villainous Super Hero of Indian Cricket

Mohammad Azharuddin, The Villainous Super Hero of Indian Cricket: Even after the wicket of Tendulkar and Sidhu went down, Indian fans did not lose hopes for victory in the game and that was because of the man who would enter the crease with his collar pointing towards the sky, his Tabeez hanging out of the jersey and wore a look confident enough to destroy the opposition bowling. Yes, I am talking about one of the most iconic, stylish players of the game, Mohammad Azharuddin.

Truly, Indian Cricket depended a lot upon the shoulders of the then style icon of the game, Azharuddin. In fact, the prolific former Indian Captain made his entry to the international Cricket with a bang. He struck the record of scoring 3 centuries in his first 3 test matches back in 1984-85. He undoubtedly held an arch like stature in the middle order of the Indian batting line up. No other player till date has been able to match his wrist-work while playing strokes, in short, he was THE perfect timer and placer of the ball. Scoring 9378 runs in ODIs with 7 centuries, backed up by 6215 runs with 22 centuries in tests, the Wisden Cricketer of the year 1991, Mohammad Azharuddin was indeed a gem of a batsman!

If one has to describe his cricketing abilities, one can twist the popular proverb as, Master of all trades, Jack of None. He was perhaps the first sensational fielder of the Indian side, a fielder who could have a direct aim at the stumps with accuracy, a player with 166 catches in tests portray his fielding brilliance.

So far, the discussion was all about his batting and fielding abilities. Well, the cherry lying at the helm of the cake is yet to be tasted and that is his strategic and calm captaincy. Azharuddin was one of the calmest contenders of the game and perhaps he was the first person to captain India on three successive World Cups, in 1992, 1996 and finally in 1999. He became the most successful ODI captain of India with 90 wins as a captain. The record was seized by MS Dhoni by his name in 2014. Also, in compliance with the above mentioned fact, Azharuddin stood to be the most successful test captain in that particular era with 14 test wins as captain out of 47 tests.

India stood to be the semi finalists under the captaincy of Azharuddin in World Cup, 1996. It was Azhar who captained India to a Hero Cup triumph in 1993. Nevertheless, he was a strategic captain who excelled in foreseeing the game situations and had extreme level of faith upon his players which supplemented his levels of success.

So far, it has been so good! But wait, people usually don’t remember Azharuddin for all these tokens of brilliance. Whenever he comes into our mind, we visualize the stained and darker sides of the game shadowed by the evilness of match-fixing and betting scandals.

In fact, it was such accusations against the then captain of the Indian team for fixing the matches and also introducing other players into fixing. Especially, three matches were pin pointed to have been fixed by Azharuddin. The first among those was the World Cup semi final of 1996. He was accused for opting to field first on such a track. Well, owing to the fact that cricket is an uncertain game with its stints of twists and turns, such a decision cannot be directly claimed as fixed as some decisions are bound to go wrong at times. Also, it is not always guaranteed that a team plays well in all the matches. According to some reports, Azharuddin confessed about his involvements in match fixing in the match against South Africa in Rajkot in 1996, some matches of the Pepsi Cup in Sri Lanka in 1997 and some in Pakistan in 1999. However, on a number of conferences, Azhar boldly claimed that he did not fix any matches. Had he done that, he wouldn’t have been the most successful captain of India. Also, after his career was chopped off due to a lifetime ban in 2000s, Azharuddin countered the decision of the ban and filed a case against the same.

After a decade’s probe on the matters, Azhar’s ban was lifted off in 2012 and he was adjourned innocent against any involvement in match fixing. This was done due to the lack of transparency on such matters. I am not going to analyse about his involvement in fixing as this still happens to be a smoky issue. There are a number of valid reasons which proves his obvious innocence while there is another face of the same coin as welll.

Some of the former players like Kapil Dev have spoke in favour of him, while some others in the likes of Vinod Kambli, after 16-17 years, raised their voices against him claiming that Azharuddin used to fix matches. Well, Kambli has the reputation for being too truthful to believe! Overall, things do remain covered and one cannot directly accuse Azhar for his involvements in such notorious activities of the game.

Whatever might be the case, the player with 99 test appearances, bonded with 334 ODI caps, deserved a brighter farewell to the cricket. He stood as the backbone for India in an era when Indian cricket went through some drastic changes. Indian Cricket does owe him a lot and leaving off with mysterious controversies, the Stylish pro of the saved the Cricket in the country from its grave and in the process, went onto dig his own!

In 2006, he was called up by the BCCI to gesture an acknowledgement for serving as one of the most successful captains of India for over a decade.

Just as he deserved to appear for 100 tests (he played 99), Azhar also deserved to score a test double ton (his highest score being 199), he also deserved to score 10000 ODI runs, the Mr. Confident and the Style tycoon of Indian Cricket also deserved a bit more respect. He stood as one of the flickering architects in building up India as a stern cricketing nation.