Former Pakistan batsman Wazir Mohammad passes away at 95

Staff Report

LAHORE: Wazir Mohammad, the eldest of Pakistans famous Mohammad brothers, has died. He was 95 years old.’Wazir played 20 Tests for Pakistan in the earliest years of their international cricket history, the least of Hanif, Mushtaq and Sadiq. Raees, now the eldest of the brothers, didn’t play a Test for Pakistan. Hanif passed away in 2016. As a lower-middle order batter, Wazir’s average of 27.62 does little justice to his impact in some of Pakistan’s most celebrated performances in the 1950s, when they arrived as a Test-playing nation in such style. His career first-class average of 40 was much more reflective of his value, though Abdul Hafeez Kardar, Wazir’s Test captain, was long an admirer. The most seminal contribution came in the Oval Test win of 1954, when Pakistan became the first side to win a Test on their first tour of England (and drew the series 1-1). Though Fazal Mahmood was the hero with 12 wickets, he would not have had a total to defend had it not been for Wazir’s resistance in the second innings. Pakistan were only 85 runs ahead, with two wickets in hand, when Wazir (in at No. 8) put on 58 with Zulfiqar Ahmed and then another 24 for the last wicket with Mahmood Hussain. Wazir ended unbeaten on a four-hour 42, having doubled Pakistan’s score with the last two wickets. Pakistan won ultimately by 24 runs. The PCB is deeply saddened by the passing of former Pakistan Test batter Wazir Mohammad. One of the four Mohammad brothers to represent Pakistan in Test cricket, he featured in 20 matches for his country from 1952 to 1959.

A couple of years later in Karachi, he put on 104 with captain Abdul Hafeez Kardar with Pakistan 70 for 5 against Australia. His 67 was the game’s second-highest score as Pakistan won by nine wickets. His finest individual performance came, however, in the Caribbean in 1957-58. That series is better remembered for Garry Sobers’ then world-record 365, as well as Hanif’s own epic rearguard 337 (in which he had a century stand with Wazir). But Wazir made 440 runs, with two hundreds and an unbeaten 97. The first of the hundreds was, until 1967, Pakistan’s fastest Test hundred. His more sedate 189 in the final Test at Port of Spain secured Pakistan a win, which meant that they had won at least one match on each of their first three tours in Test cricket, inside their first decade of playing. He would only play four more Tests after that one as, at the turn of the decade, a new crop of talent began to push for spots. One of those was his own younger brother Mushtaq, whom he played alongside on the latter’s debut (Hanif, otherwise a regular, missed that match while Mushtaq became the youngest ever Test player). Wazir, affectionately known as ‘Wisden’ for his encyclopaedic knowledge of cricket stats and trivia, continued playing first-class cricket until 1964. In his last innings, in that season’s Quaid-e-Azam trophy final, he made 23 as Karachi Whites fell 18 runs short of chasing down 333. Like Mushtaq, he had long ago settled near Birmingham in England.