Many Indian cricketers of the 1960s and 1970s, Hyderabadis in particular, must have experienced a poignant sense of loss on hearing the news of Syed Abid Ali’s death in California. As someone who owed so much of my career to his mentorship and friendship, I feel quite devastated. He lived to be 83, and I hadn’t met him for well over four decades, but that does not really soften the blow. 

For starters, he was someone I admired from afar long before I first met him and played some of my cricket with him. And what a spectacular introduction on the world stage! He took 6 for 55 in his very first Test innings, bowling first change after Umesh Kulkarni and Rusi Surti, both strictly military medium. He was not express either, but was he a clever bowler, all swing and seam and variations of pace!