Anant Dhondu Solkar (19 September 1951 – 26 May 2024) was an Indian first-class cricketer. He was the younger brother of Test cricketer

Eknath Solkar Eknath Dhondu Solkar (18 March 1948 – 26 June 2005) was an Indian all-round cricketer who played 27 Test matches and seven One Day Internationals for his country. He was born in Bombay, and died of heart attack in the same city at the age ...

Life and career

Born on 19 September 1951 in Pawas,

Maharashtra Maharashtra () is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. It is bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian states of Karnataka and Goa to the south, Telangana to th ...

, Solkar played as a bowling

all-rounder An all-rounder is a cricketer who regularly performs well at both batting and bowling. Although all bowlers must bat and quite a handful of batsmen do bowl occasionally, most players are skilled in only one of the two disciplines and are cons ...

who batted right-handed and bowled

off spin Off spin is a type of spin bowling in cricket. A bowler who uses this technique is called an off spinner. Off spinners bowl with their right-arm and a finger spin action. Their normal delivery is called an off break, which spins from left to r ...

. He had five siblings (including

) and his father was a groundsman at the Hindu Gymkhana in

Bombay Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial centre, financial capital and the list of cities i ...

. In a Harris Shield match in 1968, he scored 396 and took 6/28. This is regarded as the best all-round performance in school cricket. He made his first-class debut in the 1972/73 season for Railways and, in the same season, registered his career-best bowling figures of 8/100 in a Ranji match against Delhi. He switched to his home state team Maharashtra in the 1976/77 season and represented it for five seasons. After getting dropped from the team, he quit playing cricket on the advice of his elder brother

. He finished with 26 first-class appearances in which he took 63 wickets at an average of 23.96. After his cricket career, Solkar became an alcohol addict. He recollects, "I don’t know what happened. There was nothing left in my life after cricket. I was slowly becoming addicted to it. My day would start and end with it." In 1986, his 15-year-old daughter died of blood cancer. Solkar, who was employed with Tata Electric, quit his job in 1987. He came out of his alcohol addiction in 2007, and worked as an umpire in local matches between 2001 and 2009. He then started to coach young cricketers free of cost in Mumbai. Solkar died on 26 May 2024, at the age of 72.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Solkar, Anant 1951 births 2024 deaths Indian cricketers 20th-century Indian sportsmen Railways cricketers Maharashtra cricketers North Zone cricketers People from Ratnagiri district Indian cricket coaches