Dinkar Balwant Deodhar, born on 14 January 1892 was an Indian cricketer. He played
first-class cricket from 1911 to 1948.
Deodhar was born in Poona
(now Pune), British India. He was a professor of Sanskrit at Pune College.
Popularly known as
the Grand Old Man of Indian Cricket, Deodhar was an aggressive right-hand
batsman and a leg-break bowler. He captained Maharashtra in Ranji Trophy matches
from 1939 to 1941. In his first-class career, he played 81 matches, scoring
4,522 runs at an average of 39.32 with a highest score of 246.
Deodhar was
vice-president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the President
of the Maharashtra Cricket Association, and also a national team selector. The
Deodhar Trophy, a limited overs inter-zonal cricket tournament played in India
since 1973, is named after him. In 1996, India Post issued a
commemorative stamp in his honour. A statue of Deodhar was unveiled at Pune's
Sahara cricket stadium in 2012.
Like Bill Ashdown, Deodhar
is one of the few people known to have played first-class cricket both before
the First World War and after the Second World War, having played in the
Bombay Triangular in 1911 and the Ranji Trophy in 1946. In a Ranji Trophy
game against Nawanagar in 1944, he scored centuries in both innings,
helping his team win. He was aged 53 at the time.
He was awarded the Padma
Shri award in 1965 and the Padma Bhushan in 1991 by the Indian Government. He
was the first Indian first-class cricketer known to have lived to 100. Vasant
Raiji became the second in 2020.
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