Born April 1, 1941, Ajit Laxman Wadekar is best remembered as the man who taught India to win overseas. An aggressive batsman, a fine fielder and a leader par excellence, Wadekar’s name would forever be etched with the year 1971, the year India won in West Indies and England for the first time, feats that were considered unthinkable. He was an excellent slip fielder too. Today marks Wadekar’s 79th birth anniversary.
Wadekar was into academics and had a very late entry to cricket. Here’s an interesting story that Wadekar told ESPNCricinfo, about his entry to the game.
“We [Baloo Gupte] were in the same college. He was two years senior to me. He was in arts, and I was in science. Basically, I didn’t play any cricket till then. I was concentrating on my engineering degree. As far as I was concerned, I was thinking of finishing inter-science at Elphinstone and then going to engineering college.
“Baloo Gupte was my neighbour and we would travel in the same bus. One day, he just mentioned, ‘Ajit, would you want to be a 12th man for our college team?’ They had a wonderful XI but didn’t have anyone to get water onto the field. He said, ‘You will get some match fee too, Rs 3 a day.’ That was way back in 1957 and Rs 3 was quite a lot then. So I jumped at it,” Wadekar had recalled.
Despite starting late, his contribution to Indian cricket is in the folklores forever. Later, in the 1990s, he was the manager of the Indian side and had excellent relations with the then captain Mohammad Azharuddin.
He passed away on August 15, 2018.
