Surinder Amarnath Bhardwaj (born December 30, 1948, in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh abbreviation U.P. , is a state located in the northern part of India. With a population of over 200 million people, it is India's most populous state, as well as the world's most populous sub-national entity...

) is a former Indian Test

Test cricket

Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...

 and One Day International cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

er.

Amarnath was an aggressive left-handed batsman who performed extremely well at Indian domestic level but was largely unable to cement a regular place in the Indian national team. He played only 10 Tests and 3 ODIs for his country.

Indian cricket writer Partab Ramchand wrote "[Amarnath] was given a raw deal by the [national team] selectors". On his batting ability, "[he was] an aggressive batsman, [a] bit flashy but when in full flow he was a treat to watch and could decimate even the best of attacks." He scored a century on his Test debut against New Zealand

New Zealand cricket team

The New Zealand cricket team, nicknamed the Black Caps, are the national cricket team representing New Zealand. They played their first in 1930 against England in Christchurch, New Zealand, becoming the fifth country to play Test cricket. It took the team until 1955–56 to win a Test, against the...

 in January 1976.

Making his first-class cricket

First-class cricket

First-class cricket is a class of cricket that consists of matches of three or more days' scheduled duration, that are between two sides of eleven players and are officially adjudged first-class by virtue of the standard of the competing teams...

 debut as a fifteen year old in a career that spanned from 1963 to 1985, Amarnath scored 8175 runs

Run (cricket)

In the sport of cricket, a run is the basic unit of scoring. Runs are scored by a batsman, and the aggregate of the scores of a team's batsmen constitutes the team's score. A batsman scoring 50 or 100 runs , or any higher multiple of 50 runs, is considered a particular achievement...

 at the impressive batting average

Batting average

Batting average is a statistic in both cricket and baseball that measures the performance of cricket batsmen and baseball hitters. The two statistics are related in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages.- Cricket :...

 of 40.47.

His father Lala

Lala Amarnath

Nanik Amarnath Bhardwaj was an Indian Test cricketer. He was the first cricketer to score a Test century for the Indian cricket team, which he achieved on debut...

 and brother Mohinder

Mohinder Amarnath

Mohinder Amarnath Bhardwaj is a former Indian cricketer and current cricket analyst. He is commonly known as "Jimmy". He is the son of Lala Amarnath, the first post-independence captain of India. His brother Surinder Amarnath was a Test player...

 also represented India at Test level.