Vijay Hazare was a famous Indian cricketer born on 11th March 1915 in the state of Maharashtra. He led the Indian Cricket Team in 14 Test matches between 1951 and 1953. The match where India made her 25th Test appearance, about 20 years after India achieved Test status, Vijay Hazare led his team to first ever Test win. That win against England at Chennai was the only match that India won under his captaincy in 1951-52. India won by an innings and eight runs. The Test match has begun on a day King George VI died.
Early life of Vijay Hazare
Vijay Hazare was born in the family of working class parents who would struggle to make two ends meet. He was born in Sangli District, Maharashtra, to Marathi Christian Protestant family in the year 1915. He had seven siblings and his father was a school teacher.
Career of Vijay Hazare
Hazare was mainly a right handed batter and a right arm medium pace bowler. According to Wisden, Vijay was a shy, retiring man, and that he was not a regular captain, as a result his batting suffered tremendously. One of his rivals, Vijay Merchant also felt the same way and commented the burden of captaining India did not allow him to perform properly with his bat.
Even after so much criticism about his captaincy, he managed to have a healthy batting record for his country. He gathered 2,192 runs in 30 Test matches with a batting average of 47.65.
Career statistics
Batting and Fielding Averages
|
Mat |
Inns |
NO |
Runs |
HS |
Ave |
100 |
50 |
6s |
Ct |
St |
| Tests |
30 |
52 |
6 |
2192 |
164* |
47.65 |
7 |
9 |
1 |
11 |
0 |
| First-class |
238 |
367 |
46 |
18740 |
316* |
58.38 |
60 |
73 |
|
166 |
0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bowling Averages
|
Mat |
Inns |
Balls |
Runs |
Wkts |
BBI |
BBM |
Ave |
Econ |
SR |
4w |
5w |
10 |
| Tests |
30 |
43 |
2840 |
1220 |
20 |
4/29 |
4/29 |
61.00 |
2.57 |
142.0 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
| First-class |
238 |
|
38447 |
14645 |
595 |
8/90 |
|
24.61 |
2.28 |
64.6 |
|
27 |
3 |
The first class career for Vijay Hazare is very impressive indeed. He has a tremendous batting average of 58.38 for his 18,740 runs (highest first-class aggregate for an Indian player after
Sunil Gavaskar,
Sachin Tendulkar and
Rahul Dravid).
He slammed 60 first-class centuries (including 7 in Tests), which is the third highest for an Indian player (just behind Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar), and 10 first-class double centuries (including six during World War II, when India was the only major cricket-playing country to continue holding its domestic first-class cricket competition without interruption).
His had a modest bowling record as well, where he took 595 first-class wickets (including 20 in Tests, and Donald Bradman`s wicket three times) at an bowling average of 24.61. On the Indian domestic circuit, Hazare played for the Maharashtra, Central India and Baroda teams.
Career Records Still Held by Vijay Hazare
* First Indian batsman to score a triple century in first class cricket
* First Indian to score two triple centuries
* First Indian to score a century in each innings of a Test match (116 and 145 on successive days against the Australian in Adelaide in 1947-48)
* First Indian player to score a century in three successive Test matches
* First Indian player to complete 1000 Test Runs
* First Indian player to make fifty centuries in his first class career
Honours Received by Vijay Hazare
Post retirement Vijay Hazare was appointed as the selector for Indian Test Cricket. He has also been honoured with a trophy in his name, The Vijay Hazare trophy is one of the prestigious championship in the country at present. It is a zonal cricket championship in India.
He along with great Jasu Patel were the first Indian cricket players to be honoured with the
Padma Shri.
Death of Vijay Hazare
Due to intestinal cancer Hazare died in December 2004.
