Majid Khan
Cricketislife!
------------
Majid Khan
by Peter Walker
Great is a word bandied around in sport like a shuttlecock, but
in reality there are very few cricketers who deserve the label. One I
would suggest is Majid Jehangir Khan, former Glamorgan, Cambridge and
now the leading Pakistan Test batsman. If in sporting terms greatness
can be defined as the ability to outplay all around you, then cricket
must surely provide one of the most searching tests. Yet recognition
of an individual's brilliance need not necessarily always shine in the
spotlight of open competition.
At the windswept, icy county ground in Derby in 1969, Majid put
on the most memorable exhibition of batting skills it has been my good
fortune personally to witness. It took place in the Derbyshire nets
during one of those seemingly endless breaks waiting for the heavy
overnight rain to drain through a waterlogged outfield. Huddled around
the medieval dressing-room brazier thoughtfully provided by the Derby
committee to combat the spine-chilling draughts that used to waft
through the racecourse ground pavilion, the former headquarters of the
county, the Glamorgan team's conversation turned to the art of
batting.
We had just come from a game against Sussex where Jim Parks Jnr had
madea hundred against us on an unpredictable wicket. We agreed that it
was the speed and precision of his footwork that had kept us, and Don
Shepard in particular, at bay. At that time, Shepard was one of the
country's most feared bowlers, a man of immaculate length and
direction who bowled off-breaks at a brisk medium pace. On a turning
wicket he was virtually unplayable, and touring teams in this country
had gone away from games against Glamorgan at Swansea with a sigh of
relief that the mypoic England selectors did not include him in any of
the Test sides.
While the discussion continued to and fro across the brazier,
Majid, never at any stage of hs career a talkative man, sat silent,
orientally impassive. It was only when we had appeared to have
exhausted all line of debate that he spoke : "You don't need any
footwork in batting, just hands and eye". In terms of length, this
amounted to a major speech from Majid, then in his second seasong with
Glamorgan, having joined on a special registration in 1968, the year
after he had toured the UK with Pakistan. The Welsh county committee
had no doubt been influenced in their signing of him, by his innings
of 147 in eighty-nine minutes against Glamorgan at Swansea and the
fact that his father, the distinguished Indian cricketer Dr Jehangir
Khan, had been the pre-war Cambridge contemporary of Wilfred Wooller,
the Glamorgan secretary. These factors quickly helped to forge a bond
which was to last until 1976.
At Derby on that bleak day in June 1969, Glamorgan were on the
crest of a winning streak which lasted throughout the season,
culminating in them taking the Championship for the second time in
their first-class history with an unbeaten record to boot, the first
time this had been achieved since Lancashire in 1934. Success is a
heady brew and there were many challengers to Majid's claim that
footwork counted for nothing.
Within fifteen minutes, three of our front-line bowlers,
including Don Sheperd, lined up in a net outside with Majid padded up
at the other end about to have his theory demolished. For twenty
minutes, on a rough, unprepared, and quite-impossible-to-bat-on wicket
where the ball flew, shot, seamed and turned, Majid Khan stood
absolutely motionless, parrying the ball as it lifted, cutting or
hooking unerringly if it were wide, driving with frightening power if
overpitched and swaying out of harm's way when it lifted unexpectedly.
Unless he allowed it, not a single ball passed his bat, not a chance
was given, not a false stroke made. The bowlers were at full throttle,
yet by our own reckoning afterwards that twenty-minute session must
have yielded the young Pakistani around 75 runs ! He had just defied
every known textbook instruction, improvised strokes that just did not
exist and, without uttering a word, had emphatically made his point.
In the presence of genius, no rules apply.
From Cricket Conversations ( 1978 )
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=34vbu1%24866%40news.iastate.edu
Cricketislife!
>
Ram Guha
+++++++++++++++++++++
Majid Khan made his debut in 1965 as a 17-year-old fast bowler, then
called Majid Jehangir. Jehangir was the name of his father, a new ball
bowler for Cambridge University and All India who is best remembered
for having killed a sparrow at Lord's: killed the bird with the ball,
that is, not a catapult or a .303. The son soon decided that it was a
batsman's game, although the reason given out for his giving up
bowling was a bad shoulder.
I recently heard Bishan Bedi say of Majid Khan that he was the best
bad wicket player of his experience. Bedi came up against Majid often,
for India against Pakistan in 1978, and before that, for
Northamptonshire against Glamorgan in the English County Championship.
Those were the days of uncovered wickets, when all county sides had a
slow left-arm spinner in hand, for the rain-affected wickets that came
up every other week. And Bishan Bedi, as we know, was the finest of
the tribe. One day at Swansea a crowd of 1,400 was treated to Majid
against Bedi, footwork against flight, the loveliest and now scarcest
of cricketing sights. Bedi spun it like a top, the ball occasionally
taking a divot out of the wet mud that passed for a wicket. Majid
rushed out to take it on the full, to drive. Every now and then he
would feint to come forward but then lie back and cut through point.
Bedi did him in the end, stumped. Since Majid had by then made 70, one
might say that the result was approximately the same as that of the
India-Pakistan war of 1965, that is, a draw, dead-even.
Majid was a cold warrior, a man who rarely displayed emotion and never
talked to opponents on the field. But I do remember a show at the
Gaddafi Stadium on November 1, 1978. Pakistan needed 120-odd to win
the Test, in an hour and a half. Sent in first, the innovative Majid
was frustrated by Kapil Dev bowling wide of the wicket. At length the
Pathan uprooted the off stump, and made to place it several feet
further to the off. The act was altogether atypical, but then it was
his home ground, and he was batting against the old enemy to boot.
Those who watched that cataclysmic (if one was an Indian) series of
1978 would have thought that the bond between Majid and Imran Khan was
the bond between brothers. So it was, then. When Pakistan were in the
field, every alternate over one saw the older Khan, at slip, wait for
the little kid to come up from fine leg to fetch the ball. Majid would
take his cap, conveying it to the umpire, all the while talking to
Imran of what he might now bowl (at least that is my fancy — for all I
know, they could have been discussing the rents paid by their tenants
in Sargodha or the cuisine of a Chelsea restaurant.) Imran and Majid
have since fought, bitterly: at the time of writing they have not
spoken to one another for 15 years. Their behaviour has been moderate
in the extreme, when one considers what a Pathan generally does to
brother with whom he disagrees.
+++++
Another cricketing family
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2002/04/28/stories/2002042800270300.htm
John Smith
mistakes like reporter's (Ram Guha's) claim of Imran watching Waqar and
Akram take Pakistani team to world cup victory, although Waqar did not play
in that world cup. Ram Guha seems to have fairly limited knowledge of
Pakistani cricket and hence does not remmember Imran's pre-80 bowling
expoloits like 1976-77 performance against Australia. In short the article
leaves readers with an impression that Majid may be the best of Khans,
whereas in reality Imran along with Sobers and Keith Miller is one of the
foremost allrounders the game has ever seen.
"Cricketislife!" <cricke...@rediffmail.com> wrote in message
news:obbfjv83547d0fcb0...@4ax.com...
> Imran of what he might now bowl (at least that is my fancy - for all I