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Cricket grounds to political arena: Azhar embarks on campaign trail in Telangana
Azharuddin was known to rarely miss a catch in the slips during his times on the cricket field. Although Jubilee Hills isn’t a sitter by any stretch, the former India skipper would have to “bat well and field wisely” — the terms he used while referring to his winning strategy
The most distinctive about his appearance is his hunch. And it is this hunch that gives him away even in a crowd. Those who have grown up watching cricket in the 90s will never forget the gangly man who was born to knock the red cherry over the covers or flick the white ball and allow it to race down along the onside. The political field is now witness to his lethal moves. It is here that cricketer Mohd. Azharuddin, among the most feared number three batsmen of his time, is fighting Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s (BRS) Maganti Gopinath a ‘well-set batsman’, to use a cliched cricketing expression.
He has begun campaigning in the bylanes of the plush, undulated Jubilee Hills terrain where bestial cars and big bungalows compete with bigger names such as Bahubali director SS Rajamouli and RRR movie star Ram Charan. Though he’s a Hyderabadi, Azhar’s entry into state politics has come all the way from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh and Tonk-Sawai Madhopur in Rajasthan, where he contested for the Parliament elections in 2009 and 2014. With the election slated later this month, Azhar is seen campaigning hard. “I have always wanted to do something for Hyderabad and although things did not pan out the way I have wanted the past few years, this time around, I was adamant,” Azharuddin said speaking to HT.
Jubilee Hills was earlier part of Khairatabad - the state’s largest assembly constituency with close to six lakh votes, making it highly unwieldy to conduct and win elections. However, after the delimitation in 2002, it was split into two constituencies.
Azhar’s name was featured in the Congress Party’s second list and he is among the few candidates who got what they wanted. The Jubilee Hills constituency, also of which he is a resident, has a mixed population with a large minority base. Of the 3,70,000 votes in the constituency, about 98,000 are Muslim; 30,000 are Christian; SC and ST communities 28,000 and the OBCs account for 24,000 votes. The remaining all belong to the Reddys and Kammas who are more likely to vote for his rival Gopinath who has been nurturing the constituency for more than nine years. “It would be a tough fight for us in this constituency. Although there is a strong anti-incumbency factor, the sitting MLA is someone who has already constituted booth-level committees. He has been moving amongst people in the constituency for a year now” said a Congress corporator who is planning Azhar’s campaigns.
However, Congress spokesperson, Kaluva Sujatha sounded more confident and said the seat is a “winning place” and that the “traditional votes” (read minority) would be his. It is to pocket these ”traditional votes” that Azharuddin is seen greeting people with his give-away grin promising to resolve issues of water-logging and overflowing sewerage drains. “I am glad the MLA constituencies are not as vast as the MP ones. It used to take me more than three hours to travel from one place to another. Here I am much more confident of making contact with all the three lakh plus voters,” Azhar said. Even though Azhar was an early favourite, those in the Congress party said he was first noticed as a potential candidate at the time of the Congress presidential election when Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor were contesting to pip one another. “There were two votes for Jubilee Hills. When Azharuddin and former MLA P Vishnu Vardhan Reddy went in person to Delhi and met Mr Kharge, he was identified as a potential winner from Jubilee Hills.” Vishnu Reddy won in 2009 when he contested on a Congress ticket but lost both the subsequent elections in 2014 and 2018. Congress insiders say that the three cases including the Hyderabad Cricket Association case of alleged misappropriation of funds against the cricketer would not mar his chances of a victory.
The Congress leader said the party decided to give a ticket to Azhar to snub Vishnu Vardhan Reddy, son of a veteran Congress leader and five-time MLA P Janardhan Reddy. “Vishnu Reddy had become persona non-grata in his own constituency. His cadre got disillusioned because he never cared to step out even during Covid-19 times to reassure his people or help them. So, as per our internal survey, he was sure to lose,” the Congress leader who spoke to HT said. In fact, some of the cadres think Vishnu Reddy’s moving away from Jubilee Hills to live in another part of Hyderabad alienated him from the concerns of his constituency further. “His poor involvement cost us the GHMC seat from Jubilee Hills as well. Where we used to once poll more than 55,000 votes, we got only 4,800 in the last municipal election,” the Congress leader said.
With internal competition done away with, Azharuddin’s biggest opponent could be the BRS candidate Maganti Gopinath, a strong Kamma leader who is known to bring in his followers for an active campaign closer to the election date. “With Azharuddin coming in, it is an even contest now. Vishnu Reddy was banking on his father’s popularity who had a Robin Hood kind of an image. However, we must remember that there are a number of housing colonies in Jubilee Hills where Maganti is likely to find his followers, said Susarla Nagesh who is an active watcher of politics and a commentator.
Azharuddin was known to rarely miss a catch in the slips during his times on the cricket field. Although Jubilee Hills isn’t a sitter by any stretch, the former India skipper would have to “bat well and field wisely” — the terms he used while referring to his winning strategy.
