Wazir Mohammad (1929-2025): The quiet patriarch who gave Pakistan its cricketing soul

 JournalismPakistan.com |  Published last month |  Dr. Nauman Niaz (TI)

ISLAMABAD — There are families in cricket who seem less born of flesh and blood than of cricket's essence, dynasties whose lineage runs not through ancestry, but through the measured poise of a forward defensive, the caress of applause upon a pavilion lawn. Among such rare brotherhoods stands the House of Mohammad, five sons of Junagadh, whose names, Hanif Mohammad, Wazir Mohammad, Raees Mohammad, Mushtaq Mohammad, and Sadiq Mohammad, form the most lyrical sequence in Pakistan's cricketing scripture.

They were, each in his own idiom, craftsmen of temperament and touch, heirs not to privilege but to discipline, to the creed of labour that defined the game in its purest hour. Their cricket was never a performance, but a practice in devotion; not noise, but nuance. When they played, one felt that the spirit of the game itself had briefly come home, drawn to the elegance of men who treated the game as extensions of moral fibre.

Wazir Mohammad: The Still Centre of a Musical Family

And among them all, Wazir Mohammad, the eldest, was the still centre, the unmoving metronome in a family of music. If Hanif was the romantic who built innings like minsters, Wazir was the sage who designed their foundations. There was sobriety in his presence, a sense that nothing frivolous could dwell near him. His neatness was almost ascetic, not the polish of vanity, but of inward order. His collars were always straight, his gait unhurried, his hair immaculate, as though his appearance were a reflection of his creed: that dignity begins with discipline.

To meet him was to encounter a man composed entirely of measure, precise in speech, graceful in gesture, and modest to the point of invisibility. He wore humility not as a virtue but as a habit, unconscious and unforced, the way a great batsman leaves the ball: naturally, without spectacle. His was a countenance calm enough to steady others, his smile soft and slow, as if he weighed joy before offering it. There was nothing hurried in Wazir Mohammad, not in his strokes, not in his sentences, not even in his silences.

Cricket as Character: The Embodiment of Old Decencies

He belonged to that vanishing order of men who made cricket seem less a game than a form of character, who played not to impress, but to perfect. In every crease of his sweater, every glint of his bat's varnish, one glimpsed the refinement of a man to whom order was beauty and restraint, a kind of music. And yet, beneath that serenity lay strength, the same iron composure that once steadied Pakistan in the tempests of The Oval and the West Indies. He was the very embodiment of cricket's old decencies: grace without flourish, excellence without noise, humility without pose. Wazir Mohammad was never flamboyant; he was flawless.

He stood at the threshold of Pakistan's cricketing dawn like a quiet patriarch, his poise anchoring the exuberance of younger brothers, his calm defining their collective fire. Where others sought glory, Wazir sought truth, in the balance of a stroke, in the fairness of a decision, in the moral symmetry of the game itself. He was, in every sense, the stillness that allows greatness to breathe.

Pakistan's Living History: Second Oldest Test Cricketer in the World

Wazir Mohammad, the eldest of that illustrious quintet, the Mohammad brothers, stood his entire life not just as a relic of Pakistan's cricketing genesis, but as its living history. At ninety-five years, he was the oldest Test cricketer of Pakistan and second oldest in the world after Neil Harvey of Australia, a guardian of memories that smell faintly of linseed oil, leather, and dreams. Time has bestowed upon him a gentleness, but beneath that soft gleam still flickers the steel of the man who, long ago, helped give a fledgling nation its cricketing soul.

From Junagadh to Karachi: A Journey Forged by Partition

He was born on December 22, 1929, in Junagadh, a princely state of warm and salt winds. His father managed a salt factory, a symbol curiously apt, for salt preserves; and so too has Wazir preserved an era. The family, comfortable and industrious, owned a petrol station and a modest inn, the Green Rest House, before history shifted its direction. In 1947, the partition of the subcontinent saw Pakistan and India's maps re-drawn; the Mohammads, like millions, were uprooted and replanted across a new border. Migration was not just movement, but metamorphosis, a test of endurance that mirrored the game Wazir would come to serve. His father's early death turned youth into responsibility, and Wazir, with his brother Raees, took up the burden of survival before destiny handed him a bat.

In Karachi, amid the restless hum of a newborn country, the two brothers joined the Pak Mughal Club. There, amidst the cracked turf and sea breezes, the boy from Junagadh began to shape his craft, a style neither flamboyant nor decorative, but chiselled from patience, courage, and quiet reason.

First-Class Debut and Pakistan's Inaugural Test Tour

Wazir's first-class debut came in 1950, against the visiting Ceylonese. By his second match, he wore the crescent of Pakistan, representing his nation against the visiting MCC in Lahore, an unofficial Test, yet momentous for what it symbolised. That same year, he registered his maiden half-century, the faint beginning of a career that would ripple through history like a steady current beneath turbulent waters. From those beginnings rose the first great odyssey, Pakistan's inaugural Test tour of India in 1952–53. In Bombay and Calcutta, amidst alien crowds and alien light, Wazir learned the cruel lessons of stage fright. Years later, he would confess how the size of the crowd dazed him, how Vinoo Mankad's guile deceived him until the ball had already pitched. Yet even in struggle, there was grace, for failure, too, is the education of greatness.

The Oval 1954: Quiet Defiance Turned to Legend

The following seasons refined him. In 1954, when Pakistan ventured to England, a team of pioneers, uncertain yet proud, it was Wazir who turned quiet defiance into legend. At The Oval, on a damp and capricious wicket, Pakistan were marooned at 82 for 8, defeat staring with cold eyes. Then, with Zulfiqar Ahmed at his side, Wazir wrought one of cricket's small, luminous miracles. Toe struck by a yorker, he feigned agony, invited mercy, and turned guile into ally. As England pitched fuller, misled by compassion, he scored in singles and silence, each run a protest against surrender. His 42 not out, shaped from nearly three hours of fortitude, gave Pakistan enough for Fazal Mahmood to script the unthinkable: England humbled by 24 runs, a nation anointed in rain and glory. Fazal was the hero by the headlines, but Wazir was the pulse beneath the triumph, the unyielding conscience of resistance.

Three Brothers, Three Centuries: A Biblical Feat of Harmony

In the seasons that followed, he became the craftsman of stability. For Bahawalpur, he helped lift the inaugural Quaid-e-Azam Trophy; for Karachi, he became its first centurion in the championship. And in that final, Karachi versus Combined Services, Wazir, Raees, and Hanif all reached individual hundreds in one innings, a feat almost biblical in its harmony: three brothers, three centuries, one song of destiny.

When Australia arrived in 1956, it was again Wazir who steadied the storm. In a match of collapsing wickets and mutinous pitch, he and Hafeez Kardar darned together a stand of defiance, Wazir crafting 67 in monk-like patience while chaos swirled around. Pakistan triumphed, Fazal again the lion of the scorebook, yet Wazir's hand was there, invisible but indispensable, the quiet engineer of victory.

West Indies 1957-58: The Odyssey That Crowned Him

Then came the West Indies, the odyssey that crowned him. In 1957–58, under the bright, merciless sun of the West Indies, Wazir's game flowered into fullness. A century in Barbados, a rearguard 119 stand with Hanif's monumental 337, and that immortal final act in Trinidad: a masterly 189, as Pakistan won by an innings and one run. Between them, Hanif and Wazir amassed 1,068 runs, the only time in Test history two brothers have crossed a thousand in a series. If Hanif was the architect, Wazir was the arithmetician, the theoretician: precise, unflinching, utterly devoted to the balance of the game.

 "Wisden": The Custodian of Runs and Reason

He was "Wisden" to his teammates, a moniker both affectionate and apt. His mind was a rulebook bound in intuition. Once, after Sir Garfield Sobers's record-breaking 365 in Jamaica, the crowd stormed the field, pockmarking the wicket. Wazir, ever the scholar, invoked the laws: if the pitch is damaged by unnatural means, play must not resume. Hafeez Kardar listened; the umpires read; the day was saved. That was Wazir, the custodian not only of runs, but of reason. After cricket's applause faded, he turned to nurture rather than nostalgia. He led the Pakistan Eaglets to England in 1963, a nursery of promise that would later blossom into Test captains and stars, Intikhab Alam, Mushtaq Mohammad, Majid Khan, Asif. He discovered Wasim Bari, guided fledgling careers, and then, quietly, withdrew from the game's limelight as one leaves a beloved room, backward, with reverence.

A Peaceful Departure in Solihull: October 13, 2025

Today, October 13th, 2025, in the soft greenery of Solihull, far from the clamour of Karachi's maidans, Wazir Mohammad passed away in absolute peace. He'll be remembered as an alert, gracious, and serenely unbowed by time. The oldest of Pakistan's Test men, the first of her cricketing brothers, he remained the symbol of an age when the game was played not for applause, but for honour, when patience was an art, and courage, a creed.

To speak of him is to recall not just a man, but a temperament: that of cricket itself, before commerce and noise, steady, steadfast, and quietly sublime. And now, on an autumn morning in Solihull, far from the cries of Karachi's gulls and the sunlit turf of his youth, Wazir Mohammad has laid down his bat for the final time. At ninety-five years, he departed as he had lived, without fanfare, without indulgence, leaving behind a silence more eloquent than applause.

The Legacy of Order: Silence Refined into Music

His passing was not an event, but a dimming, a slow, tender retreat from the world he had served with so much grace. Those who knew him speak of the same serenity that marked his batting: that poised pause between bowler's stride and bat's reply, that stillness which in itself became an art. Even time, it seems, had grown reluctant to disturb him. The news came softly, carried not on headlines but on what's app, the sort of undertones that fill drawing rooms where old scorecards rest folded in sunlight. And somewhere, one imagines, an aged cricket field bowed its head in gratitude, its grass stirred faintly by remembrance.

He was the eldest of Pakistan's cricketing sons, the first among brothers who brought both dignity and divinity to the game. To the end, his manner retained the neatness of his youth, the same calm symmetry of thought and motion. His shirts remained crisply pressed, his words measured, his humour mild and without edge. In an age of noise, Wazir Mohammad was silence refined into music.

A Timeless Stroke: The Temperament That Defined Greatness

What remains now are not the numbers, those fragile hieroglyphs that crumble beneath history's dust, but the temperament that defined him. He taught that cricket, like life, was not about flourish but form; that greatness resides in patience; that victory, stripped of grace, is a hollow thing. He leaves us the legacy of order, a belief that beauty lies not in the unrestrained, but in the restrained perfectly.

And perhaps, somewhere beyond the edge of light, one can still picture him, immaculate in cream, hair neatly parted, eyes alight with that serene intelligence. He stands once more at the crease, the field stretching quietly around him, the sun warm on his shoulder. The bowler runs in. The world holds its breath. And Wazir Mohammad, calm, composed, and sure, meets the delivery with the gentlest of strokes, straight, timeless, and true.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un - "Indeed, we belong to Allah, and to Him we shall return"

Dr. Nauman Niaz is a civil award winner (Tamagha-i-Imtiaz) in Sports Broadcasting & Journalism, and is the sports editor at JournalismPakistan.com. He is a regular cricket correspondent, having covered 54 tours and three ICC World Cups, and having written over 3500 articles. He has authored 15 books and is the official historian of Pakistan Cricket (Fluctuating Fortunes IV Volumes - 2005). His signature show, Game On Hai, has been the highest in ratings and acclaim.