Mumtaz Hussain: Unusual but Unlucky

Former Hyderabad left-arm spinner Mumtaz Hussain passed away in Hyderabad last night after losing his battle with cancer. Hussain, 52, had a distinguished domestic career and like his contemporaries, Rajinder Goel and Padmakar Shivalkar, was unfortunate to have missed selection for India, with his salad days coinciding with that of Bishen Bedi. His old spinning mate for Hyderabad, V Ramnarayan described him as a very dear friend and as someone who came one step away from playing for India.

Apparently when the West Indies toured here in 1966-67 Mumtaz was included in the 14 along with the then unknown Bishen Bedi for one of the tour games and it just happened that Bedi made the final eleven, took a few wickets and the rest as they say is history. Ramnarayan believes that Mumtaz could have done equally well, if given that one break, and in a period where international batsmen did not handle spinners with the assurance that they show today, could have gone on to become a world beater.

According to Ramnarayan, Mumtaz started out in university cricket as a sort of freak bowler who could bowl four or five kinds of deliveries including the orthodox left armer, the googly, the chinaman, the finger spun delivery that came into the batsman and so on. Mixing it up with the finesse of a bartender mixing cocktails, he was totally unplayable and fooled everyone including the keeper who had to devise a set of hand signals to read him. Mumtaz made his first big splash with a 48 wicket haul for the Osmania University team that won the Rohinton Baria Trophy for the first time in the 1966-67 season. Among his victims in the final against Bombay University was a 17 year old who went by the name of Sunil Gavaskar, stranded yards down the track and stumped by a wrong'un, as he narrates in Sunny Days.

Sadly when Mumtaz graduated to the Ranji level he became just an orthodox left arm spinner for the most part, as Ramnarayan relates. Somewhere down the line he cut out all his variations, or was told to cut it out, and lapsed into a 'very accurate but comparatively harmless bowler'. A hard hitting lower order batsman and a brilliant all round fielder, Mumtaz was a key member of the illustrious Hyderabad side led by ML Jaisimha and including Tiger Pataudi, Abbas Ali Baig, Abid Ali and others, taking 173 wickets at 19.18 in a Ranji Trophy career from 1967 to 1977.