Vijay Merchant: A few days ago, in the Nottinghamshire-Lancashire match at Trent Bridge in the English County Championship, Nottinghamshire's 9-wicket win saw a performance that no cricketer has shown in years.

In reply to Lancashire's 331, Nottinghamshire scored 503 runs and in this, opener Haseeb Hameed, who has played 10 Tests for England, had a record of 247* runs in 459 balls (622 minutes), i.e. he remained unbeaten till the end. Lancashire were bowled out for 251 in the second innings and Nottinghamshire made 81-1 for victory, in which Haseeb's score was 24* – in this too, he remained unbeaten till the end as long as the innings lasted. Another thing to note is that he also fielded in both the innings of Lancashire. This means that he was on the ground for as long as the match lasted.

He was on the ground for the entire match and the total time was 23 hours and 45 minutes. This is a record in the Cricket Atlas which is in the name of very few openers – starting the innings twice and not getting out till the end, fielding in two innings of the other team and winning the match.

When we searched for other openers who made such amazing records, one name, that of an Indian opener, also came up – he was an amazing opener but there is no mention of such a unique record in his name. This time we will talk about him.

This was Vijay Merchant – the same one who recorded an average of 71 in first class cricket and only Don Bradman's record is better than this.

There were fewer Tests in his time, so he played only 10 Tests in a career of 18 years (all against England) and his record was – 859 runs in 10 Tests at an average of 47.72, 3639 runs in Ranji Trophy at an average of 98.75 and 13000+ runs in first class cricket at an average of 71. He went on England tour twice (there was a gap of 10 years between the two), batted brilliantly, scored a total of 4000+ runs in both the tours. The record we are talking about here was made in one of these England tours. He was an amazing batsman.

The first tour was in 1936 – he topped the tour team in batting by scoring 1745 runs at an average of 51.32. Although, from the point of view of records, these tours are not considered very successful for India, but in this, a 3-day match was played against Lancashire on 15, 16, 17 July at Aigburth, Liverpool, which India won – Vijay Merchant scored 135* and 77* in both innings as an opener, but no one saw this performance as the kind of record that has come to light now.

India batted first and made 271 – Merchant was the opener and remained at 135*, meaning he held on to his place as 9 wickets fell in front of him. Lancashire replied with 234 – Merchant fielded throughout the innings. India XI batted even worse in the second innings – making just 161 and Merchant remained unbeaten again after making 77. Merchant and Wazir Ali (36) added 64 for the first wicket but when Wazir was out, wickets kept falling and none of the next 8 batsmen could score even a double – No. 11 Mohammad Nisar ended the streak and made 22 of the 31-run 10th wicket partnership with Merchant.

In that match, captain CK Naidu (6-46) bowled brilliantly and bowled out Lancashire, which had many legendary cricketers, for just 114 runs in the second innings, winning the match by 84 runs. Merchant also fielded in the second innings. In this way, he was on the ground during the entire match and his team won. How unique this record is – it can be guessed from the fact that till now only 17 cricketers have this record and Haseeb ended the 17-year drought of this record.

This tour of 1936 was very successful for Vijay Merchant and the proof of this is that Wisden selected him as one of the 5 cricketers of the year for his performance in that English season. He played so well that after seeing him in that tour, England's legendary batsman C.B. Fry (26 Tests, more than 30 thousand runs in first class cricket) said something which is mentioned even today not only by cricket historians but also by those who write on India's freedom struggle – why this is a different story. After seeing Merchant's batting, Fry said – 'We should paint his face white and take him to Australia as an opener in our team.'

What's even more interesting is that today's cricket writers write Vijay Merchant as an opener after looking at his records (he was an opener in 12 of the 18 Test innings he batted in and scored all his three 100s in the opening role) – in reality Merchant was not a specialist opener. The team selected for the 1936 tour did not include Merchant as an opener for the Test series. When the tour began, Merchant batted in the first 7 innings and scored 366 runs – he was not an opener in any of them. After this, he injured his finger and remained on the injured list for about 3 weeks. Meanwhile, team player Firoz Palia was completely out of form while Dattaram Hindlekar got injured. In such a situation, when Merchant returned to the team, he was asked to open. Thus, he was the first Indian cricketer to prove that no one is born a 'specialist opener' – one becomes an opener through talent, perseverance and determination. Vijay Merchant never opened the innings until he set foot in England in 1936! He came in at number 6 in Test cricket.