One of the heroes of India’s game-transforming 1983 World Cup win, middle-order batsman Yashpal Sharma passed away at the age of 66 on Tuesday (July 13).
Yashpal, who played 37 Tests and 42 ODIs for India between 1978 and 1985, couldn’t reportedly recover from a cardiac arrest that he had suffered. He is survived by his wife Renu Sharma, two daughters Puja, Preeti and son Chirag Sharma.
A gritty customer, Yashpal scored 2489 runs in international cricket for India. He scored 2 hundreds and 9 half-centuries in his Test career and produced 4 scores past fifty in ODIs.
He was instrumental to Indian cricket’s biggest triumph in the summer of ’83 where he scored 240 runs at an average of 34.28 in difficult batting conditions.
Yashpal was the top-scorer with an 89 in India’s morale-boosting opening game victory over the mighty West Indies in Manchester and backed it up with crucial knocks of 40 in the must-win group encounter against Australia and 61 in the semi-final versus England.
As a Test cricketer, he made his debut in 1978 at Lord’s against England and produced his first hundred in the format in Delhi the following year against the visiting Aussies. He also struck a century in Chennai when England arrived on Indian shores two years later and stitched a record stand of 316 with Gundappa Viswanath.
Yashpal was a prolific run-scorer at the first-class level playing for Punjab, Haryana and Railways and made 8,933 runs from 160 matches at an average of 44.88. He scored 21 hundreds and 46 fifties in his first-class career before bringing an end to his playing time in the 1992-93 season.
Following his retirement, Yashpal served Indian cricket as a national selector in two important periods, spanning 2004-05 and 2008-11. He also did Hindi commentary for matches and was involved in TV expert work for various news channels.
