Then, there were his impressive fitness levels and fielding. His ESPNcricinfo profile sums it up thus: “Abid Ali had the feet of a sprinter, the energy of a marathon runner and the will of a decathlete, but his misfortune was that he was born 20 years too early. His game was made to order for one-day cricket: he bowled brisk medium-pace, fielded outstandingly, and was a busy lower-order batsman who ran between the wickets as if on invisible skates.”
He was also quite a colourful character. Ramnarayan also wrote of him: “He was demonstrative in an age when most bowlers tended to hide their emotions. His appeals to God when he beat the edge, and his sardonic grins at batsmen blessed by the Lord – unfairly in Abid’s opinion – were sights to see and remember.”
Abid Ali never went on to establish himself as a premier name in Indian cricket, in part because he had the misfortune of being a bowler in the era of India’s famous spin quartet. He was a mainstay for Hyderabad, though, playing 212 first-class games across 20 seasons, taking 397 wickets at 28.55 and scoring 8732 runs with 13 hundreds and 41 fifties. He played his last Test match in December 1974, his last ODI in June 1975, and his last first-class game in 1978-79.
After his playing days, Abid Ali went on to coach Andhra at the Ranji Trophy, and also had stints with UAE and Maldives. At the time of his death, he was living in Tracy, California, with family.
