Amarnath's bravery a lesson for world cricket

Cricket can be a dangerous sport, but no one prospered through reckless courage and obduracy against intimidatory bowling quite like Mohinder Amarnath, writes Robert Bagchi in the Guardian.

Being hit while batting, though, remains the most conventional way to suffer injury in the game and those who withstood West Indies' attack, and Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson during the 70s and 80s, deserve most praise. Chief among them was India's happy hooker Mohinder Amarnath, recalled after a long exile in the Lancashire leagues with Lowerhouse and Crompton, who took them on with, initially, only a solar topee to protect himself. Richard Hadlee fractured his skull, Imran Khan knocked him unconscious, Malcolm Marshall dislodged his teeth, Thomson cracked his jaw and Michael Holding sent him to hospital to have stitches put in his head.

Yet he still managed to score three centuries against Pakistan during the 1982-83 series and warmed up for his starring role in India's 1983 World Cup victory by hitting two more and four fifties in a brutal five-Test tour of the Caribbean.