Waqar Hassan, last surviving member of Pakistan’s first ever Test team of 1952, passes away

Waqar Hasan, the last surviving member of Pakistan’s first-ever Test team, which played India in Delhi in October 1952, passes away in Karachi at the age of 87.

A middle-order batsman went on to play 21 Test matches during the course of a first-class career that spanned more than a decade and a half, from 1948-49 to 1965-66.

Waqar Hassan scored 1071 runs in 35 Test innings, an average of 31.50, and hit a century and six half-centuries. His first-class average was 35.64.

His first outing in Test cricket was not that promising, as he scored 8 and 5 in an innings defeat, but he became Pakistan’s highest run maker by the end of the five-Test series with 357 runs at an average of 44.62, including three half-centuries.

He also served as the chief selector for PCB in 1982-83.

Christopher Martin-Jenkins writes about Waqar Hassan in the World Cricketers: A Biographical Dictionary (Oxford, 1996), saying, “Waqar Hassan was an attractive stroke maker, who was ideal in a crisis and a fine field either at the cover or further out”.