Mohinder Amarnath always remained unwept, unsung cricketer.

Mohinder Amarnath always remained unwept, unsung cricketer.
Image Source - uploaded by author
The article speaks about the heroic deeds of Mohinder Amarnath. He was one of the major contributors of India's one day world cup victory of 1983. He had remained unwept, unsung.

Records in Test Match cricket or one-dayers do not always tell the right story. Those cricketers who get the opportunity of playing 100 test matches, the records of those players only categorize them as the great players. But there are other players who don’t get that opportunity and play less number of matches. But if they keep a mark in the short number of matches they are also great cricketers.

 

Mohinder Amarnath was one of those cricketers. He had played only 69 tests. He scored 4,378 runs with an average of 42.50.

He scored 11 centuries. He also captured 32 wickets with his medium pace bowling. He played 85 one-dayers and scored 1,924 runs with an average of 30. He captured 46 wickets in those matches.

 

The record does not show the talent of the batsman. Mohinder Amarnath made his debut in 1969 and played till 1988. He was dropped from the team a number of times due to off form and had to fight hard to get a place back. That was one of the reasons of him failing to play many tests. He also represented India in 1st Down position in the 1970s, when the fast bowling attack of Australia with Lilee, Thomson, Gilmour, and West Indies with Marshall, Holding, Andy Roberts and Garner terrorized the batsmen all over the world.

 

In India other than Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath none of the other batsmen had the technique to play the deadly fast bowling. Mohinder Amarnath scored more than 1000 runs in tests against Australia, Pakistan and West Indies. Pakistani captain Imran Khan in his interview had said he was one of the finest batsmen that he bowled to other than Gavaskar. In the 1982-83 season, when India lost to Pakistan 3-0 in tests, Mohinder Amarnath was the highest run-getter of the series and got man of the series jointly with Imran Khan. Imran Khan captured 40 wickets in the series.

 

Mohinder Amarnath won the man of the match award both in the semi-finals and finals of the Prudential World Cup in 1983. India won the world cup and Mohinder Amarnath was the major contributor. He captured important wickets of both England batsmen in the semi-finals and West Indian batsmen in the finals with his accurate swing bowling.  He also scored important runs to find India victorious. He faced 80 balls in the final match against the West Indies and scored 26 runs. Due to his calm and quite knock India could score 183 runs in 60 overs. He was the vice-captain of the team and played under the captainship of Kapil Dev. He got injured by different fast bowlers of his age including Jeff Thomson, Michael Holding, Malcolm Marshall, Sir Richard Hadlee and others. But he did not stop his favourite hook shot. He was probably India’s best hooker and puller.

 

He still stands as one of the best 5 test batsman the country had produced in the last 100 years.


Let us know how you like this article. Like it and Rate it below.
16.06K 1
0
0 stars - by 0 user(s)

Related Articles

An Uncle endures the pain of his niece's pitching performance even though he knows she will persist.

Post Your Comment

1

0

1

0