Character and Courage
Amarnath was noted for his personality, courage and determination. West Indian cricketing great Vivian Richards called him "one of the nicest men to have ever played the game" and former Australian Test opening batsman David Boon said "Concede didn't seem to be in his vocabulary" .
Gideon Haigh writing in The Age says: "In an era replete with fast bowling and unrestricted in use of the bouncer, he never stopped hooking - despite many incentives to do so. He received a hairline fracture of the skull from Richard Hadlee, was knocked unconscious by Imran Khan, had teeth knocked out by Malcolm Marshall and was hit in the jaw so painfully by Jeff Thomson in Perth that he could eat only ice cream for lunch. 'What separated Jimmy from the others,' Michael Holding said, 'was his great ability to withstand pain . . . A fast bowler knows when a batsman is in pain. But Jimmy would stand up and continue.' "
In the Bridgetown Test during India's tour of the West Indies in 1982-83, Amarnath had to retire for stitches after being hit on the head. On returning to the game, he faced one of history's most lethal fast bowlers Michael Holding. It was a given that Holding would try to intimidate Amarnath by bowling a bouncer, and indeed he did so. While most would expect that a batsman in such a situation would do the prudent thing and duck, instead Amarnath stood his ground and hooked the ball to the boundary. However the West Indies bowling attack comprising Malcolm Marshall at his best, Michael Holding, Winston Davis and Wayne Daniel would wreak their most lethal vengeance upon Amarnath during their 1983/84 tour of India by restricting him to only 1 run in six innings, during which Holding scalped Amarnath three times for a duck. Amarnath had scores of 0,0,0,1,0,0 and was hence dropped just months after his career-high success at the 1983 World Cup.
Amarnath was noted for his conflicts with the Indian cricketing political establishment, famously having called the selectors a "bunch of jokers" . This often resulted in his exclusion from the Indian team also.
Read more about this topic: Mohinder Amarnath
Famous quotes containing the words character and/or courage:
“The character of the logger’s admiration is betrayed by his very mode of expressing it.... He admires the log, the carcass or corpse, more than the tree.... What right have you to celebrate the virtues of the man you murdered?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“All my life I’ve been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence.”
—Luis Buñuel (1900–1983)