It was in a disused temple in Karachi that Hanif Mohammad developed his cricket. The family had moved from Gujarat after partition, and had made the temple hall their new home. The constraint of the real estate has often shaped the style of batsmen in their formative years and Hanif’s case was no different.
A small wall separated the garden from the road on the leg side, and if the young Hanif, and his brothers, lifted the ball over the wall, it was deemed out. “We seldom did. That was our secret,” Hanif would recall later. It was the birth of the most successful defensive technique to have emerged from Pakistan that was to leave an indelible impression in cricket grounds from Barbados to Bombay.
Hanif was Pakistan’s first cricketing star, and became an adored figure through two stonewalling Test knocks – a 16 hours, 30 minutes knock of 337 against West Indies to save a Test, and a year later, piling up 499 in a domestic game to beat Don Bradman’s then record of 452.
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