Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Zaheer Abbas Biography

Syed Zaheer Abbas Kirmani (Urdu: سید ظہیر عباس کرمانی) (born 24 July 1947) is a former Pakistani cricketer regarded as one of the finest batsmen produced by that country. Zaheer played his first Test in 1969, and in his very second Test he scored 274 against England, still the fourth ever highest score by a Pakistani batsman. This was the first of four double-centuries Abbas made; only six men have scored more.[1] Abbas, fondly called the 'Run Machine', also had great success in first-class cricket, and is the only Asian batsman to have scored one hundred first class centuries. [2]. He also had a long stint with Gloucestershire; joining the county in 1972, he remained there for thirteen years. During that time he scored over a thousand runs in the majority of his thirteen seasons. He also made over two thousand runs in a single season on two occasions for the club (1976 and 1981). During those thirteen years at Gloucestershire he played 206 First Class games, scoring over 16,000 runs. He averaged 49.79, hitting 49 100s and 76 50s. Sunil Gavaskar, the former Indian Test captain, has said while commentating that the Indian players would often say to Zaheer, \"Zaheer Ab-bas karo\", which means \"Zaheer, stop it now\" in Urdu and Hindi, referring to Abbas' free scoring. He remains the second highest on the all-time ICC ODI batting rankings[1]. Zaheer retired from international cricket in 1985, and has officiated as a match referee in one Test and three ODI matches. Zaheer is known in Pakistan as the \"Asian Bradman\", a reference to former Australian great Sir Donald Bradman

Zaheer Abbas