Former Indian cricket captain died on November 7, 2006. He was 80 and was suffering from lymphatic cancer. Polly was a veritable giant in an era when defeat was more the rule than the exception for the country in Test matches. The man with the booming voice strode the Indian cricket scene like a colossus with his big-hitting prowess that got him the nick-name ‘Palm-tree hitter’ on tours to the West Indies (twice during his career) which stretched from 1948 to 1962. In all he played in 59 tests, captained the country in 8 of these and scored 3,631 runs.