Azharuddin at Lord's

Today's cricket memory is contributed by Alex Massie:

The 1990 Lord's Test will, I suppose, be remembered as Gooch's Match. The England skipper bludgeoned 333 and 123 off a mild-mannered Indian attack whose teeth were further blunted by as true a pitch as Lord's can have produced in 50 years.

Gooch's two innings were a triumph of concentration and gluttonous accumulation; quantity trumped quality. The cricketing enthusiast had to look elsewhere for spiritual or aesthetic nourishment. Happily, Mohammad Azharuddin was on hand to provide as much entertainment as the Saturday crowd could have dared hope for. Chasing England's mammoth 653 for 4 declared, the Indian captain batted with the audacity of a man with one last chance and nothing to lose.

Spurred on, perhaps, by the need to make amends for his decision to field first, Azhar's innings dazzled. Flamboyant and dexterous, there was a thrilling recklessness about the manner in which he carved the English bowling through the covers and, especially, mid-wicket. This was batting that paid tribute to all the wristy conventions of the subcontinent, as Azhar wielded his bat as though it were a flashing scimitar. Such an innings could not continue forever, alas, but his 121 off just 111 deliveries was worth a dozen centuries made by less adventurous batsmen. Of the English bowlers, only nagging Angus Fraser escaped a beating.

This was Azharuddin's finest hour in England. India lost the Test, but that's a stodgy detail when set beside the glittering brilliance of his innings.

Here are two other descriptions of Azharuddin's innings, from contemporary match reports:

Azharuddin dazzled. Not a few strokes early in his innings would have been hard to excuse had they cost him his wicket; but his luck held, and a capacity Saturday crowd was treated to a rare exhibition of audacious, wristy strokeplay which, with twenty fours, took him into three figures off only 88 balls. - Wisden 1991

Saturday's crowd arrived cursing their luck because they had missed Gooch's monumental innings. By the close they were rejoicing that they had seen Azharuddin give probably the most dazzling batting recital of the season. His balance, lightness of foot and wristy dexterity evoked descriptions of cricket's Golden Age, of 'Ranji' especially. Pilloried by the media and even by his own cricket manager, and forced to concede England's highest total against his country, 'Azhar' retaliated with one of the most brilliant exhibitions of strokeplay ever seen. - Bill Frindall, Gooch's Golden Summer

[For links to the other posts in this series, see here.]