Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi

Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi, fondly known as Tiger, one of India’s greatest cricket captains passed away at Sir Ganga Ram hospital, New Delhi on 22 September 2011. He died due to respiratory failure leading to cardiac arrest. He was 70.

• Mansoor was born to Iftikhar Ali Khan, eighth Nawab of Pataudi and his wife Sajida Sultan, second daughter of the last ruling nawab of Bhopal.
• He was educated at Welham Boys’ School in Dehra Doon, Lockers Park Prep School in Hertfordshire, Winchester College, and Balliol College, Oxford.
• His father expired on Mansoor’s eleventh birthday in 1952, whereupon Mansoor followed as the ninth Nawab of Pataudi.
• While the princely state of Pataudi had been merged with India after the end of the British Raj in 1947, Mansoor inherited the titular dignity of Nawab of Pataudi.
• On December 27,1969, Mansoor married the famous film actress Sharmila Tagore, who is a distant relative of Rabindranath Tagore.

Pataudi Jr., as Mansoor came to be known in the cricket world, was a right-hand batsman and a right-arm medium pace bowler. In an international career spanning 15 years Pataudi played 46 Tests, scoring 2,793 runs with six Test centuries at an average of 34.91, all while playing with one good eye.

A car accident in July 1961, six months before his Test debut, had left him with a severely impaired right eye. No one would ever know what he could have attained with full vision. In March 1962, at the relatively young age of 21, Pataudi Jr. was elevated to the captainship of the Indian cricket squad. He also captained Sussex in 1966. Pataudi Jr. was skipper of the Indian cricket squad in 40 matches, only 9 of which resulted in victory for his squad. He was, nevertheless, skipper when the Indian squad recorded its first ever overseas Test victory against New Zealand in 1967.

He contested in 1971 elections to the Lok Sabha to protest the abolition of Privy Purse in India. He contested from Gurgaon as a candidate of the Vishal Haryana Party.