Former Indian cricket skipper Mohammad Azharuddin is gearing up to bat after a long time but on a completely different pitch—Politics. This novel innings the wristy batsman is likely to play as a Congressman.
“Azharuddin will formally join Congress on Thursday,” said Veerappa Moily, who is in-charge of the Andhra Pradesh Congress. He, however, did not say whether the veteran player would contest the Lok Sabha polls due this year or not.
Azhar, who is already in town, met some of the senior party leaders last evening. He is scheduled to meet Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Thursday afternoon.
Earlier he had met Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, Moily and PCC chief Srinivas last month and expressed his desire to join the party. Sources said that the former cricketer had expressed his keen interest to contest the Parliamentary elections from Hyderabad on the Congress ticket.
Before being banned from cricket in 2000 for his alleged involvement in the match-fixing scandal that rocked the game internationally, Azhar had played 99 Test matches and scored 6215 runs at an average of 45.03. He also played 334 ODIs and scored 9378 runs at an average of 36.92.
Over the years, different political parties have been inducting celebrities from different fields in hope of people vote their role models to elect. Inducting the former skipper into the Congress party is part of the same strategy.
Most of the Bollywood actors, who joined politics, have later either relinquished or remained flopped. Scores of names can be counted in this category viz. Dharmendra, Govinda, Jaya Prada and many more. Same is the situation with cricketers who joined politics viz., Kirti Azad, Manoj Prabhakar and Navjot Sidhu. Politics for them has been proved a fool’s gold.
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