M. K. MANTRI



🏏🏏
M. K. MANTRI
(1 Sep 1921 - 23 May 2014)

India's oldest Test cricketer at the time of his demise, Nasik born Madhav Krishnaji Mantri, the right-handed wicket-keeper batsman of the Bombay team of the 1940s and 1950s, is regarded as one of the finest openers Indian cricket has had...

The Brabourne Stadium debutant of December 1951, Mantri played just the four Tests in his career - 3 against England, and his final against Pakistan at Dacca in 1955. While the 67 Test runs, with 39 as highest, 8 catches and a stumping can be termed ordinary, it was his 4403 runs with 7 hundreds - a double included - and 26 fifties, 136 catches and 56 stumpings from 95 first class games that made him a class apart...

Captaining Bombay to an emphatic 531 run victory over Holkar in the 1952 Ranji Trophy finals, with individual scores of 94 and 152, earned Mantri a place for the June 1952 England tour. As luck would have it, Mantri was part of the top-order collapse at Headingley in 1952 when India lost 4 wickets without a run on the board - the other three being Pankaj Roy, Datta Gaekwad and Vijay Manjrekar...

While his first class career stretched from 1941/42 to 1967/68, Mantri remained a part of the Bombay team that lifted the Ranji title 5 times in 12 years. With advancing age, he passed over the wicket-keeping responsibility to his understudy, Naren Tamhane...

A stalwart of Dadar Union, ACC and Bombay, Mantri played his final first class game in the form of the Koyna Relief Fund match, Mangalore, in 1968 at the age of 46. Though he hung his cricketing boots, Mantri kept himself involved with the game, taking on the mantles of manager, Test selector and the President of the Bombay Cricket Association, including the development of Women’s cricket in Bombay...

The maternal uncle of another cricketing icon from Bombay, Sunil Gavaskar, Mantri passed away in Mumbai, this day 2014, after a cardiac arrest. He was 92...

🙏🙏🌹💐   🇮🇳

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