THE article ‘Remembering Fazal Mahmood — The Oval hero’ (May 30) made my day. It was one of those pieces that make the past come back. A hero to the nation, Fazal I considered to be my personal icon. A student, I lived in his shadow.

His leg-cutters ran through the English side the way — and let me repeat the cliché which I learnt as a student through Dawn’s sports pages — a knife does through butter.

Paying tribute to Fazal does in no way chip away at Abdul Hafeez Kardar’s role as the architect of the victory at The Oval in 1954. Indeed it was his knowledge and experience of English cricket and his instinct as a captain that made him choose the right moment in the post-tea play on the fourth day to use Fazal to devastate the English side. Fazal’s victims in the post-tea spell were Peter May, Godfrey Evans and Denis Compton. Earlier in the day he had dismissed the redoubtable English captain, Len Hutton.

That Fazal was a remarkably handsome man was known to all, but it was news to me that a Bombay and a Hollywood director had offered him the hero’s roles in Aan and Bhowani Junction.

As Kardar wrote in one of his articles in Dawn, cricket played a role in strengthening Pakistani nationalism, because Fazal, Hanif Mohammad, Imtiaz Ahmed, Maqsood Ahmed — known as Merry Max! — and others had become household names.

Cricket then didn’t have the Midas touch, and Kardar and his boys truly played what indeed was then a gentleman’s game.

Cricket Crazy Carachiite
Karachi

Published in Dawn, June 6th, 2021