The career of Mansur Ali Khan, the Nawab of Pataudi reads like a romance. A man who was a cricketer in more senses than one is unfortunately not with us anymore.
Mansur Ali Khan, the ninth and last Nawab of Pataudi, was arguably the best captain India has ever produced. He was handed the captaincy of India at a tender age of 21, the youngest captain in the world until that record was broken in 2004 by Tatenda Taibu. Something worth a mention is that he severely damamged his right eye in a car accident well before he made his debut for India.
After his debut in 1961 and only three Tests, he was made the captain of the national team ahead of some senior players in the team like Chandu Borde, Vijay Manjrekar and Polly Umrigar.
From the very beginning he was known for his skills, his ambitious attitude, his poise and panache as he had already captained Sussex and Oxford University. He then changed the course and direction of Indian cricket.
The Indian team till then played more to represent the country and not so much for winning. The team lacked the belief that they could play a Test and bowl the opposition out twice in a single Test.
Pataudi is known as the man who changed that and instilled feelings of self belief, confidence, faith and taught his team how to fight. Between 1961 and 1975, he captained India in 40 Tests, of which India won nine. This included the magical feat of leading India to its first ever Test win at Dunedin in 1968 and the team's first ever series win abroad in New Zealand.
If his successor Ajit Wadekar was successful as a captain in the early 1970s, it was only because Tiger Pataudi had impregnated the idea of playing the team to its strength of match-winning spinners - Bishan Singh Bedi, BS Chandrashekhar, Erapalli Prasanna and Venkataraghavan.
Apart from captaining the side, he made a name for his personal achievements too. Six hundreds, including a double hundred against England in Delhi, and 16 fifties bear testimony to his gumption. He was a Tiger on the field being one of the finest fielders in the covers in the history of Indian cricket.
Tiger was once smacked on the jaw at the Eden Gardens against West Indies in 1975 by 6 feet 2 inches tall Andy Roberts. He was back on the field with a wired jaw as soon as the next wicket fell to hit six elegant boundaries.
One innings which stands out in his career is one he played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in 1967. Pataudi came to the green pitch when the scoreboard read 25 for 5 and came along with a runner as he had pulled his hamstring. This innings of 75 is regarded better than his six hundreds and is referred to an innings played with one leg and one eye.
It is because of his and his father's services to Anglo-Indian cricket that the bilateral Test series between India and England have been named the 'Pataudi Trophy'. His father Iftikhar Ali Khan is the only cricketer to have played for both India and England.
While some of us shed tears and some hold them back, one question which will always remain unanswered is, what all would the Nawab have achieved with two eyes?
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