After 40 years ...
On June 3, 1971, the 23-year old Zaheer Abbas took guard at Edgbaston in his second Test and began his journey towards a sublime double-hundred, to announce himself to the world
Nitin Sundar
25-Feb-2013
On June 3, 1971, the 23-year old Zaheer Abbas took guard at Edgbaston in his second Test and began his journey towards a sublime double-hundred, to announce himself to the world. The Dawn's Qamar Ahmed remembers the day, and pays his tributes to one of the most graceful batsmen to have emerged from Pakistan.
No one has summed up his skill and style better than John Woodcock, the celebrated cricket writer of The Times and the former editor of the Wisden Almanack, when he wrote these lines about Zaheer: “The most ruthlessly mechanical of them must have been the legendary Sir Donald Bradman, the most enduring was Sir Jack Hobbs with 197 first-class centuries, the most calculating may well have been Geoffrey Boycott, but none of them could have played with more ease and elegance than Zaheer whose batting gave as much pleasure in England when he was with Gloucestershire, as it must have done in Pakistan.”
Nitin Sundar is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo