Syed Abid Ali (9 September 1941 – 12 March 2025) was an

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 ...

Indian cricketer who was a lower-order batsman and a medium-pace bowler. He also played an important role in Indian cricket in the 1960s and '70s.

Early life

Abid Ali attended St. George's Grammar School and All Saints High School in Hyderabad. In 1956, he was picked to play for Hyderabad Schools by the selectors, who were impressed by his fielding. He scored 82 against

Kerala Kerala ( , ) is a States and union territories of India, state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile ...

and won the best fielder's prize. A few years later, when the State Bank of Hyderabad formed a cricket team, he was given a job there. He started off as a wicket keeper before becoming a bowler.

Playing career

Abid made it to the Hyderabad junior side in 1958–59 and the state

Ranji Trophy The Ranji Trophy is a premier domestic first-class cricket championship played in India and organized annually by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The teams representing regional and state cricket associations participate. BCCI ...

team in the next year. He hardly bowled in the first few years and did not score his first Ranji hundred till 1967. He was unexpectedly picked for the Indian team that toured

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and

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that year. He made it to the team for the first Test against

possibly in the place of the captain, M. A. K. Pataudi, who dropped out injured. Abid scored 33 runs in both innings and took 6 wickets for 55, the best by an Indian on debut at that point. Sent in to open the batting in the third Test, he hit 47. This was followed by innings of 81 and 78 in the final Test. Abid was the non-striker when

Sunil Gavaskar Sunil Manohar "Sunny" Gavaskar (Marathi pronunciation: Help:IPA/Marathi, uniːl ɡaːʋəskəɾ born 10 July 1949), is a former captain of the Indian national cricket team who represented India national cricket team, India and Mumbai crick ...

scored the winning runs against the

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in the

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Test of 1971. When

tried to chase a difficult target in the final Test of the series, Abid bowled Rohan Kanhai and Garry Sobers off consecutive balls. A few months later, he hit the winning boundary when India defeated

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by four wickets at the Oval. In the

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Test of the same series, he took the first four wickets for 19 runs before lunch on the first day to reduce England to 4 for 41. He played nine more Test matches, and scored 70 runs against New Zealand in the 1975 World Cup. Abid continued to play first class cricket for four more years. He scored more than 2,000 runs and took over a hundred wickets for Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy. His highest individual score was 173 not out against Kerala in 1968-69 and his best bowling was 6 for 23 against

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

the Oval The Oval, currently named for sponsorship reasons as the Kia Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, located in the borough of Lambeth, in south London. The Oval has been the home ground of Surrey County Cricket Club sinc ...

in 1974.

Coaching career

Abid coached the junior team of Hyderabad for a few years, before moving to California in 1980. He coached the Maldives in late 1990s and the UAE between 2002 and 2005. Before coaching the UAE, he trained the Andhra team that won the South Zone league in

in 2001–02. Abid resided in California in his later years. He coached promising youngsters at the Stanford Cricket Academy before retiring.

Personal life and death

Obituaries for Abid Ali appeared in the media in the early 1990s when he had in fact survived a heart bypass surgery. His death was mistakenly announced on the air by Indian former cricketer Farokh Engineer. Abid Ali had two children, a daughter and a son. Later in life, he resided in the United States, where he died on 12 March 2025, at the age of 83.

References

Bibliography

* Sujit Mukherjee, ''Matched winners'', Orient Longman (1996), p 76-90 * Christopher Martin-Jenkins, ''Who's Who of Test Cricketers''

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Abid Ali, Syed 1941 births 2025 deaths Cricketers at the 1975 Cricket World Cup Hyderabad cricketers India One Day International cricketers India Test cricketers Indian cricketers 20th-century Indian sportsmen South Zone cricketers State Bank of India cricketers Cricketers who have taken five wickets on Test debut Coaches of the United Arab Emirates national cricket team Indian cricket coaches Cricketers from Hyderabad, India All Saints High School (Hyderabad) alumni