Last player of Pak’s inaugural Test team Waqar Hasan dies

KARACHI: Waqar Hasan, the last surviving member of Pakistan’s inaugural Test team, which played India in Delhi in October 1952, has died in Karachi at the age of 87.

A middle-order batsman, Waqar’s first outing in Test cricket wasn’t too auspicious, as he scored 8 and 5 in an innings defeat, but he ended the five-Test series as Pakistan’s highest run-maker, with 357 runs at an average of 44.62, including three half-centuries.

Waqar went on to play 21 Test matches during the course of a first-class career that spanned more than a decade and a half, from 1948-49 to 1965-66. He finished with 1071 runs in 35 Test innings, an average of 31.50, and hit a century and six half-centuries. His first-class average was 35.64.

"Waqar Hassan was an attractive strokemaker, who was ideal in a crisis and a fine fielder either at cover or further out," Christopher Martin-Jenkins wrote of Waqar in World Cricketers: A Biographical Dictionary (Oxford, 1996).

"It gives me immense satisfaction to have achieved many firsts for Pakistan: first to score a half-century in each innings of a Test (Bombay, 1952-53), first Test half-century in England (Lord's, 1954), first Test half-century at home, and first to score two half-centuries in a home Test [Dacca, 1954-55], first century partnership (with Hanif Mohammad, Bombay, 1952-53), first double-century partnership (with Imtiaz Ahmed, Lahore, 1955-56),” Waqar recounted in an interview with The Cricket Monthly in November 2012, by which time he had started splitting his time between Karachi and London.

Originally from Lahore, Waqar shifted to Karachi in 1945 after being offered a job with the Public Works Department, and by the early 1960s, he launched a textile machinery business. The reason, as he explained, was financial.

Meanwhile, the PCB has expressed profound grief and sorrow over the demise of Waqar Hasan. PCB Chairman Ehsan Mani said: “It is a sad day for Pakistan cricket as today we have lost our last hero who put us on the world cricket map in 1952. He was from that elite group cricketers that laid the foundation of what turned into a proud cricket nation.

“I had the privilege of knowing him personally and I have nothing but utmost respect for Waqar. Waqar was not only an outstanding cricketer but a thorough gentleman who set very high standards. He was an articulate and smart cricket administrator who contributed in Pakistan with his wisdom and progressive approach and vision. On behalf of the PCB, I offer my deepest condolences to Waqar Hasan’s family and friends, and assure them that Waqar will always be remembered for the immense contribution he made to Pakistan cricket.”