Polly Umrigar

Polly Umrigar is a kind of “lost” name in Indian cricket. His achievements as a player didn’t get the required recognition.

He made the most important contribution to Indian cricket by scoring the first double century by an Indian in Test cricket against New Zealand in Hyderabad.

Polly was born in a Parsi family in Bombay. The Parsi community used to dominate Bombay cricket in that era. He made his first class debut for Parsis at the age of 18 in the Bombay Pentangular in 1944, and studied for a BSc at St Xavier's College. He captained the Bombay University team. He also played hockey and football competitively.

He scored 115* for Combined Universities against the touring West Indians in October 1948. This performance brought him to national attention, and earned him a single appearance in the 2nd Test against the same team in Bombay seven weeks later.

Apart from his sizzling performances with the bat, Polly also led India in Tests. His Test captaincy was nothing less than a roller coaster ride. He was given this skipper’s status against the West Indies in a single Test match in 1958-59. But he was soon replaced by Ghulam Ahmed just after leading this Indian side in one Test.

Though, Ghulam faced consecutive defeats at the hands of the mighty West Indies and announced his retirement thereafter. Polly was again called to lead the national side in the fourth Test at Madras.

But a confusion developed about the replacements for Ghulam Ahmed and Vijay Manjrekar, who was injured. Umrigar wanted another batsman, Manohar Hardikar, to replace Manjrekar, but Ratibhai Patel, the President of BCCI insisted on the off-spinner Jasu Patel to play in his place. Umrigar resigned the captaincy on the night before the Test.

He was a person who quit national captaincy on being forced to play a player against the team's interest, Polly Umrigar showed the way to young cricketers. From him we can learn to succeed in life, and yet not let go of our principles.

He represented India for three more years but never again captained the country. His 337 runs in the five Tests of the series was the highest for India. Umrigar had led India in two unofficial Tests against the Commonwealth XI in 1953-54 winning one of them. From the second Test match against New Zealand in 1955-56 till the first Test against the West Indies three years later, he captained the side in eight successive Test matches. India won two of the New Zealand Tests by an innings.

Umrigar was a “run machine” of his era. He holed numerous records of like scoring most number of Test runs as well as hundreds till Gavaskar broke his record.

Polly scored a total of 3631 runs in his Test career of 59 matches. He was a man of tons during his reign as he went to make 12 hundreds in his cricketing span. He was a fine domestic player as well. With more than 16000 runs in Domestic circuit including 49 tons and 80 half centuries including a mammoth best individual score of 252*.

A decent bowler in both international as well as domestic level, Polly had some outstanding performances to his name with the red cherry at both levels. 35 scalps in international matches and 325 in domestic is what is considered to be a “performance to recognize” for any bowler. He had a couple of five-for at the highest level.