He gives the impression that all he did was to walk out to the pitch, take guard, and set his mind to keep batting and batting. It certainly worked. Fifty years later, his accomplishments are still going strong.He gives the impression that all he did was to walk out to the pitch, take guard, and set his mind to keep batting and batting. It certainly worked. Fifty years later, his accomplishments are still going strong.

Hanif Mohammad is no ordinary icon. He’s an icon to icons, which makes him a super-icon.

As Pakistan’s first batting anchor, his career spanned 1952 through 1969, which means that most fans have not seen him bat.

Youngsters, especially, might find it difficult to appreciate what all the fuss is about.

Some idea of Hanif’s hallowed standing comes from the way he is revered by other legends. In 2003, at the launching ceremony for Javed Miandad’s autobiography, Miandad and a handful of other notables were seated on the stage while the audience streamed in and took their seats. At one point Hanif Mohammad quietly walked in with the crowd and silently took an empty spot. Miandad had been in a bubbly mood until then, but once he spotted Hanif in the audience, his composure vanished and he became nervous and fidgety. The ceremony had to be interrupted. Miandad refused to proceed until Hanif was invited on to the stage and seated next to him.

Later, during Miandad’s speech, he broke from the script to relate one of his favourite Hanif stories. As a young boy, Miandad had once received a gift from Hanif, who knew Miandad’s father. It was a bat Hanif had used in the nets. In retrospect, this gesture is full of the symbolism of a mantle being passed, but of course at the time Miandad had no idea he would one day become the batting heir to Hanif. He was simply thrilled at cradling a bat Hanif Mohammad had used.

What left the deepest impression on Miandad was that the only marks on the bat were right in the centre of its sweet spot; the rest of the surface was without a spot or scratch. Miandad has told this story many times, but it never fails to make his eyes light up. You can see in him the same wonder he must have felt as a 12-year-old.

Such veneration is sobering, because it makes Hanif a great figure whom even the greats hold up as a great of their own. What has Hanif done to deserve such exalted status? Well, he did something pretty earth-shattering -- not just once, but twice. It has been 50 years since those exceptional feats — 337 in a Test at Bridgetown in 1958 and 499 in a first-class match at Karachi in 1959 — and the passing years have enshrined them in myth.

There have been 22 triple-hundreds in Test cricket, yet several features of Hanif’s innings make it stand out as the greatest of them all. It was the highest individual Test score on foreign soil -- and still is.

At 970 minutes, it was the longest Test innings of its time — and remains so to this day. It is the highest individual score in the second innings of a Test, which is a more treacherous period than the first innings. Most impressive of all, it was made under crushing pressure and against near-impossible odds — Pakistan were following on 473 behind, the pitch was deteriorating, the umpires were partisan, and Hanif was without a protective helmet and even a thigh pad.

One year after that triumph in the West Indies, Hanif made his quadruple century. The golden anniversary was commemorated this month on January 11, with articles in the local and international media, including Cricinfo.com and the UK’s The Guardian. This record-breaking knock came in a semifinal of the 1958-59 Quaid-i-Azam trophy in which Hanif opened for Karachi against Bahawalpur. He ended the first day on 25 and the second on 255. After tea on the third day, he crossed Donald Bradman’s 452 not out, which had stood as the highest score in first-class cricket for 30 years.

Hanif’s innings were played on a matting surface, which always produces sideways movement, and against a bowling attack that included the Test spinner Zulfiqar Ahmad. His record would reign for another three decades, until Brian Lara bettered it with 501 not out in a first-class match in England in 1994.

A score of 499 leaves you wondering what on earth kept the 500th run from being scored. The answer is that Hanif was run out, and he was furious. It turns out that the scoreboard erroneously showed him on 496 and, with two deliveries left in the day’s play, he worried his captain would declare overnight. He was run out on the next delivery, trying to grab a second on a misfield. “Had I known I was batting on 498, I would have waited for the last delivery to get the required runs,” Hanif writes in his autobiography Playing for Pakistan.

He is now 74 years old, leading a comfortably retired life in Karachi.

Hanif will be the first to tell you he had no idea his exploits would cast a shadow extending for half a century and beyond. He gives the impression that all he did was to walk out to the pitch, take guard, and set his mind to keep batting and batting. It certainly worked. Fifty years later, his accomplishments are still going strong.