Adieu Billy!

Very few players with just four Tests under their belt can be counted among legends. Khalid “Billy” Ibadulla, who recently passed away at the age of 88, was one such cricketer.

The Lahore-born Ibadullah who made his Test debut against Australia in Karachi in 1964, occupies a place in the history books for being the first Pakistani to score a century on Test debut. He was one of the six debutants in the Karachi Test as Pakistan regenerated after their early years of success. Ibadulla had been drafted into the side at the insistence of the captain Hanif Mohammad and he immediately repaid that faith, with 166 in the first innings.

He was part of a 249-run opening partnership with fellow debutant, and wicketkeeper, Abdul Kadir. It remains the highest partnership between two debutants for any wicket in Test cricket, and was a national record for the first wicket until Aamer Sohail and Ijaz Ahmed broke it in 1997.

He would only go on to play three more Tests though, instead building a fine career with Warwickshire. He was one of the first Pakistanis to play county cricket (AH Kardar had played for Warwickshire for three seasons when Pakistan were not a full member and Khan Mohammad played one game for Somerset), after being overlooked for Pakistan selection for the 1954 tour to England. Unhappy, he came to England to forge a career as a professional cricketer and did so successfully, playing for nearly 18 seasons.

After he finished at the county, he became a coach at a school in the UK, a sign of things to come. Soon after he moved to New Zealand to play for Otago (and some games for Tasmania in Australia) as well as do some coaching, He played a key role in the early development of Glenn Turner, one of New Zealand's greatest batters.

He ended with a prolific first-class career, scoring 17,078 runs at 27.28 and picking up 462 wickets at 30.96. Of his 417 first-class outings, 377 were for Warwickshire, for whom he played for more than a decade.

"He was a special cricketer, one of the greatest, and we had lots of fun times together," Warwickshire president Dennis Amiss, who played alongside Ibadulla at the club, wrote in a tribute to his former team-mate. "He could be really naughty at times, lots of mickey taking and he gave as good as he got. We loved him at Warwickshire."

Former Pakistan cricketers also mourned Ibadullah’s demise. –with wire inputs