Javed Miandad is by far one of the greatest batsmen in the world and perhaps the best produced by Pakistan. The veteran batsman played over 124 Tests and 233 ODIs in his illustrious career making over 8832 and 7381 runs respectively with a total of 31 centuries to his name.
He was also quite a character and kept the game lively with his verbal banter on the field and when the game was against arch-rivals India, he intensified his volleys to opposition bowlers.
Former India spinner Dilip Doshi recalled one such banter from Miandad which happened in the Bangalore Test of the 1983 series between the two sides.
“Basically you got to understand that Javed has this street fighting attitude, a truly great batsman, one of the best I’ve bowled to, I really respect him as an opponent. He’s a good friend as well, I love him off the field but once he got on the field, it was like a change of character,” said Dilip Doshi in an interview with former India left-arm spinner Murali Kartik.
Kiran More recalls when Saleem Malik wanted to hit him with a bat; his encounters with Javed Miandad
“He loved room outside the off stump. My style of bowling is bowling at the stumps. I restricted his favorite shots, if he had to carry on, he would have had to take risks. Sometimes he wasn’t willing to do that, it would frustrate him and the only way he would try to get you off your concentration was to create some sense of irritability and he was good at that, he has done with Kiran More, he did it with Dennis Lillee and he has done it many more times with me,” he further said.
Doshi revealed that in order to throw him off his game, Miandad repeatedly asked him about his room number in the hotel. When Doshi replied why he wanted to know his room number, Miandad hilariously replied that he wanted to hit a six so that the ball will go into his hotel room.
“That day what he was trying to do in Bangalore on my recall Test was trying to tell me ‘What’s your room number? I wanna hit the ball there.’ It became a legendary thing, many people have repeated that, with some added spices but it’s fine, it was all in good banter,” Doshi added.
