Pananmal Punjabi is the oldest living Indian Test cricketer now

Punjabi played 32 First-Class matches for Sind and Gujarat, finishing with an average of 38 with six hundreds.

Deepak Shodhan (above) is currently the second-oldest living Indian cricketer after Pananmal Punjabi (Photo Courtesy: Deepak Shodhan)

With Madhav Mantri’s sad demise Pananmal Punjabi becomes India’s oldest surviving Test cricketer. Abhishek Mukherjee looks at an oft-forgotten Test opener whose career was restricted to a single Test series.

With the demise of Madhav Mantri on May 23, 2014, Pananmal Hotchand Punjabi, 19 days younger than Mantri, became India’s oldest surviving cricketer. A sound, old-school opening batsman (and occasional wicket-keeper), Punjabi played 32 First-Class matches for Sind and Gujarat, and finished with an average of 38.29 with six hundreds.

He made it to the Pakistan tour of 1954-55 based on three hundreds in four innings. He opened batting with Pankaj Roy in all the Tests, but though he reached double-figures seven times, he could never go past 33. He never played another Test.

Punjabi is also the only living nonagenarian among Indian Test cricketers. The list of surviving Indian cricketers above 80 reads:

Name	Date of Birth	Age on May 23, 2014
Pananmal Punjabi	September 20, 1921	92 years 244 days
Deepak Shodhan	October 18, 1928	85 years 216 days
Datta Gaekwad	October 27, 1928	85 years 207 days
CD Gopinath	March 1, 1930	84 years 82 days
Chandrakant Patankar	November 24, 1930	83 years 179 days
Madhav Apte	October 5, 1932	81 years 229 days
Bapu Nadkarni	April 4, 1933	81 years 48 days
Sadashiv Patil	October 10, 1933	80 years 224 days
Nari Contractor	March 7, 1934	80 years 76 days

(Abhishek Mukherjee is the Deputy Editor and Cricket Historian at CricketCountry. He blogs at http://ovshake.blogspot.in and can be followed on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/ovshake42)