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Pananmal Punjabi: A nonagenarian Test opener

The son of an insurance agent, Punjabi was born in Karachi.

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Photo credit: Ramadham Presents The Galaxy of Indian Cricketers
Pananmal Punjabi is the fifth-longest lived Indian Test cricketer. Photo credit: Ramadham Presents The Galaxy of Indian Cricketers

Pananmal Punjabi, born September 20, 1921, played sporadically for Sind and Gujarat during a long career. Abhishek Mukherjee looks at the man who played through India’s first Test series in Pakistan, but never before or after.

Pananmal Hotchand Punjabi is the answer to a rather well-framed, convoluted quiz question: despite his surname, he hailed from Karachi, spoke Sindhi, played mostly for Gujarat, and worked at Burmah Shell — which made his life a geographically diverse one, especially when it came to names.

Tall by Indian standards (5’9”) Punjabi relied more on solid defence and technique than strokeplay. He did not have a spectacular career, but played five Tests for India nevertheless — perhaps a couple more than what he ought to have. His First-Class career read 1,953 runs from 32 matches at 38.29 with 6 hundreds. Five of these matches were Tests, which amounted to 164 runs at 16.40.

Early days

The son of an insurance agent, Punjabi was born in Karachi. He did his matriculation, made his debut at 22, but played only two First-Class matches — both for Sind — in the first eight years of his career. In his second match, against Bombay, Punjabi scored 73 and 57.

Following partition the Punjabis moved to Gujarat. Selected for West Zone against the touring Pakistanis of 1952-53, Punjabi scored 142. The next season that saw him blossom. In consecutive matches he scored 7 and 100 against Saurashtra, 34 and 193* against Maharashtra, and 107 and 24 against the touring Commonwealth XI (the attack included Peter Loader, Sam Loxton, and Jack Iverson). The season record read 465 runs at 93 with 3 hundreds. The selection to India’s maiden tour of Pakistan was a no-brainer after that.

To Pakistan, and beyond

Pankaj Roy and Punjabi opened the batting in all 10 innings in the series, all of which ended in draws. He scored 111 against Karachi at his hometown in a tour match, but did little of note otherwise. Making his debut at Dacca he managed 26 and 3. He scored 33 in the second innings of the second Test at Bahawalpur. It remained his highest Test score.

The opening stand of 58 with Roy in the innings was also the first fifty-run partnership he was involved in. Roy and Punjabi also put up 52 in the second innings of the third Test at Lahore. To be fair to Punjabi, he finished fourth on the batting charts with his 164, after Roy (273), Polly Umrigar (271), and Vijay Manjrekar (269).

Punjabi did not play another Test. He played for four more seasons that amounted to only 11 matches. In his final season he scored 224 not out as Gujarat declared on 439 for 8 against Saurashtra. He played a single match after that — against Maharashtra — before hanging up his boots for good.

Final days

As mentioned before, Punjabi worked for Burmah Shell. He passed away on October 4, 2011 at Bombay Hospital, but the fact had gone unnoticed till Madhav Mantri’s death on May 23, 2014. Punjabi lived till two weeks after his 90th birthday, which made him the fifth-longest lived Indian Test cricketer after MJ Gopalan, Cotah Ramaswami, Mantri, and Mushtaq Ali.

(Abhishek Mukherjee is the Deputy Editor and Cricket Historian at CricketCountry. He blogs here and can be followed on Twitter here.)

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