Rahul Mankad, son of legendary Vinoo, passes away

Mumbai: It was a sad day for Mumbai’s cricket community as 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 finally 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.The illustrious Mankad family had a rich cricketing tradition — while Rahul’s father Vinoo and brother Ashok represented India, his second brother Atul and Rahul himself played First-Class cricket. “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. Being his roommate was a taxing thing because he was such a clean, meticulous, organised person about his clothes and cupboard! One thing you would be assured of with him is that the room would be clean thanks to him! There was a lot to learn from him in terms of cleanliness! I’ve great memories of him!,” said former Mumbai captain and current Baroda Cricket Association CEO Shishir Hattangadi.