Published: May 23, 2014, 12:15 PM (IST)
Edited: Aug 04, 2014, 06:39 PM (IST)
With Madhav Mantri’s sad demise Pananmal Punjabi becomes India’s oldest surviving Test cricketer. Abhishek Mukherjee looks at an oft-forgotten Test opener whose career was restricted to a single Test series.
With the demise of Madhav Mantri on May 23, 2014, Pananmal Hotchand Punjabi, 19 days younger than Mantri, became India’s oldest surviving cricketer. A sound, old-school opening batsman (and occasional wicket-keeper), Punjabi played 32 First-Class matches for Sind and Gujarat, and finished with an average of 38.29 with six hundreds.
He made it to the Pakistan tour of 1954-55 based on three hundreds in four innings. He opened batting with Pankaj Roy in all the Tests, but though he reached double-figures seven times, he could never go past 33. He never played another Test.
Punjabi is also the only living nonagenarian among Indian Test cricketers. The list of surviving Indian cricketers above 80 reads:
|
Name |
Date of Birth |
Age on May 23, 2014 |
|
Pananmal Punjabi |
September 20, 1921 |
92 years 244 days |
|
Deepak Shodhan |
October 18, 1928 |
85 years 216 days |
|
Datta Gaekwad |
October 27, 1928 |
85 years 207 days |
|
CD Gopinath |
March 1, 1930 |
84 years 82 days |
|
Chandrakant Patankar |
November 24, 1930 |
83 years 179 days |
|
Madhav Apte |
October 5, 1932 |
81 years 229 days |
|
Bapu Nadkarni |
April 4, 1933 |
81 years 48 days |
|
Sadashiv Patil |
October 10, 1933 |
80 years 224 days |
|
Nari Contractor |
March 7, 1934 |
80 years 76 days |
(Abhishek Mukherjee is the Deputy Editor and Cricket Historian at CricketCountry. He blogs at http://ovshake.blogspot.in and can be followed on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ovshake42)
