Former Pakistan batter Wazir Mohammad dies at 95

A couple of years later in Karachi, he put on 104 with captain Abdul Hafeez Kardar with Pakistan 70 for 5 against Australia. His 67 was the game’s second-highest score as Pakistan won by nine wickets.His finest individual performance came, however, in the Caribbean in 1957-58. That series is better remembered for Garry Sobers’ then world-record 365, as well as Hanif’s own epic rearguard 337 (in which he had a century stand with Wazir). But Wazir made 440 runs, with two hundreds and an unbeaten 97. The first of the hundreds was, until 1967, Pakistan’s fastest Test hundred. His more sedate 189 in the final Test at Port of Spain secured Pakistan a win, which meant that they had won at least one match on each of their first three tours in Test cricket, inside their first decade of playing.He would only play four more Tests after that one as, at the turn of the decade, a new crop of talent began to push for spots. One of those was his own younger brother Mushtaq, whom he played alongside on the latter’s debut (Hanif, otherwise a regular, missed that match while Mushtaq became the youngest ever Test player).Wazir, affectionately known as ‘Wisden’ for his encyclopaedic knowledge of cricket stats and trivia, continued playing first-class cricket until 1964. In his last innings, in that season’s Quaid-e-Azam trophy final, he made 23 as Karachi Whites fell 18 runs short of chasing down 333. Like Mushtaq, he had long ago settled near Birmingham in England.