Jonty Rhodes of an earlier generation

As a fielder, Parkar had few equals. He had the anticipation and speed of South Africa’s Jonty Rhodes and his consistency to hit the stumps from any angle and distance made him a much greater threat than Australian Ricky Ponting.

Like CK Nayudu’s legendary hitting, Parkar’s electrifying fielding was lost much before the advent of One-day cricket and the magic of television. Parkar was a versatile fielder — sensational in the outfield anddangerous close-in, where he plucked catches from shoelaces at silly-point. There will be very little debate that Parkar would have been a certainty in the Indian One-day squad had he been born two decades later.

He played in an era when Mumbai flexed their cricketing muscles like no other state team in the world. It was said that getting into the Indian team was comparatively easier than breaking into the Mumbai team. Despite Parkar’s multi-faceted talents, he had to endure the agony of being the 12th man for Mumbai for four years in a row in the sixties.

Parkar’s signature shot was the falling sweep — a la Rohan Kanhai. One of the shortest-ever to play international cricket, the penchant was naturally for the side-of-the-wicket shots like the hook, pull and cut. But despite lacking the inches, he used his quickness to come dancing down the wicket to play effortless drives in front of the wicket.

Milind Rege is one man who has seen Parkar from close, playing alongside for in the Inter-offices forTatas, inter-club for Dadar Union besides Mumbai and West Zone in the Ranji and Duleep Trophies respectively. Rege once said he had not seen a better right-hand batsman than Parkar facing the genius of Bhagwat Chandrashekar.

Parkar was the first of the throughbred emerging out of the Ramakant Achrekar stables. The finest hour of Battering Ram’ was probably in the 1972-73 Irani Trophy at Pune when he scored 70 and 195 on a dicey track while taking on the likes of Pandurang Salgaonkar, Madan Lal, Bishen Bedi, Erapalli Prasanna and S Venkataraghavan.

His opportunities in Tests were sadly limited. In fact, he scored 35 in his final innings — a score which is often enough to warrant another chance in Indian cricket.

Parkar was a quiet, introverted and a genuine do-gooder. Sadly, a city which boasts over 70 international cricketers and hundreds of first-class players, there were less than 10 from the fraternity to bid the good soul a final farewell. This to a man who had battled through three-and-a-halfyears in persistent vegetative state (PVS) coma and endured several surgeries and hospitalisations. Mumbai cricket took another blow on Thursday.