Rahul Mankad, son of Vinoo Mankad passes away

Rahul Mankad, a former Mumbai cricketer and son of legendary cricketer Vinoo Mankad, passed away on Wednesday after a brief ailment at the age of 66 in London. Mankad played 47 first-class matches for Mumbai between 1972 and 1985, in which he scored 2,111 runs@35.77, with five hundreds and 12 fifties, besides picking up seven wickets@35.71. He was a part of the team's Ranji Trophy triumphs multiple times.

He also played 10 List A matches, in which he scored 66 runs. He's survived by his wife and two daughters. Having taken severe exception to the term 'Mankaded' every time a bowler ran out a non-striker who was backing up unfairly, as he felt it insulted his father, Mankad won a long battle earlier this month when the Marylebone Cricket Club finally decided that it should no longer be treated as an unfair means of dismissal, and be considered as a run out.

"My reaction is, about bloody time!," he had told this paper from a London hospital. Sadly, he was in no condition to celebrate it after having suffered multiple heart attacks while on a visit to London from Dubai, where he was based out of. Rahul was the brother of former India batsman Ashok Mankad.

"I'd played with him for the Bombay Schools team (that side included Sandeep Patil too), and then for Mumbai. In the 1976-77 season, I had a long partnership with him in a Ranji Trophy game against Maharashtra at the Nehru Stadium in Pune. I had scored 96, and he made 161.

After I was out to a long hop, Ashok Mankad cracked a double hundred," recalled former India skipper Dilip Vengsarkar while talking to TOI. "I played with him at Hindu Gymkhana and when I started my first-class career. So we spent a lot of time together in the dressing room at both the places.