In two fields, if nowhere else after their defeat by New Zealand, England still lead the cricket world. One is in law-making ( MCC is overseeing the major revision to be announced next year). The second is in forming the reputation of a cricketer. We may no longer have the power of veto in the purlieus of ICC; we may recline in a semi-recumbent, semi-paralysed posture at the bottom of the world Test rankings. But we continue to make and break reputations as if we retain the power of old.

The most effective Test offspinner between World Series Cricket and the emergence of the wrist-cum-finger-spinners Muttiah Muralitharan and Saqlain Mushtaq was Bruce Yardley, by a distance, yet in the general estimation his reputation is no higher than John Emburey's, or even lower. Bruce Reid was as difficult as anyone on the days when he was bending the ball into the right-handed bat, a Glenn McGrath with swing. But Reid and Yardley had something else in common, beyond being Western Australians: they never made a Test tour of England, so they never penetrated the consciousness of our opinion-forming media and public to the extent that their record of a hundred-plus Test wickets deserved.

 Dougie Walters still has heroic status in Australia as one of the great flair batsmen, but he never made a Test century on his four tours of England, so who's Doug Walters? But to place an emphasis on what a player does in England, rather than taking an overview of what he does in all conditions, is not rigorously fair judgment. We rate Gordon Greenidge as the Great Modern Opener and rightly so, but it was not until his 32nd and last Test innings in Australia that he made a Test century there, as he was troubled by the bounce of their pitches (and the hundred came at `flat' Adelaide, where many a player has enjoyed his only success in Australia).

Hanif Mohammad, like Walters, had a lesser Test record in England than elsewhere. But that on its own should not be enough to deny him the reputation he deserves. He was the `Little Master'. Like Brain Lara, he had a purple patch in which he made a Test triple-century and the highest first-class innings to that point. In 97 test innings he scored 12 hundreds, a rate surpassed by the three Ws but by few other postwar batsmen. He was the Father of the Reverse-sweep too.

Hanif's influence on the game in his own country has also to be taken into account. It always seems to be a batsmen who is the chief figure in popularising cricket: WG in England, Trumper rather than Spofforth in Australia, George Headley in the West Indies, Aravinda de Silva not Muttiah Muralitharan in Sri Lanka. Pakistan in the early-mid 1950s needed someone to focus on as an embodiment of the new nation, and it was Hanif and cricket that filled the vacuum. Omar Kureishi, the first radio commentator on Pakistan cricket, remembers travelling by rain with Hanif and their compartment being submerged by the masses whenever they stopped at country stations. This was in spite of the fact that cricket commentary on Pakistan radio until the late 1960s was transmitted not in the language of the masses but in English, Cricket took a hold even though the crowds which clustered around radios in shops and villages could not understand what was being said, and depended on educated individuals for a translation from the Oxford English on the air. Until Hanif caught the popular imagination, cricket was limited to Karachi, where the various religions had competed against each other before Partition on the same vibrant lines as they had in the Pentangular in Bombay, albeit on a smaller scale; to the middle class and army officers of Rawalpindi and Hyderabad; and to Lahore, especially its university (it has been calculated that, in 1952–53, two-thirds of Pakistan's First Test team were graduates of the two main colleges at Lahore University). So it is highly conceivable that cricket could have remained the preserve of the post-Raj elite, like polo or squash, without Hanif and radio (the English commentaries must have lent the game a mystique if nothing else). These were the two main constituents in the first half of the sport's popularisation in Pakistan, just as much as Imran Khan and television were in the second half.

The Graces are the only cricket family to compare with the Mohammads, unless Dean and Danny Waugh get their skates on. WG, EM and GF logged over 71,000 first-class runs and 3400 wickets between the three of them. Wazir, Raees, Hanif, Mushtaq and Sadiq scored nearly 80,000 and took over 1200 wickets.

Both families had a sporting if not dominant mother. Hanif's mother Ameer Bee was badminton champion of Junagadh in western India when the family had a comfortable middle-class life there. She was also strong enough to bring up her family in far tougher circumstances in Karachi after they had fled to Pakistan at Partition and her husband had died of throat cancer in 1949. These refugees ended up in the suddenly vacated hall of a Hindu temple. Hanif was attending a Gujarati medium school (as he did not know Urdu), and playing for it one day, when he was spotted by the coach Abdul Aziz Durrani. Hanif later spotted Wasim Bari in similar circumstances. Talent-identification, of future Test players by past or present Test players, seems to be one of the strengths of Pakistan Cricket, compensating for lack of infrastructure.

 Hanif would like it known that the opposition when he made his 499 was not rubbish

Durrani, father of the Indian allrounder Salim Durrani, was a proud old Afghan who had kept wicket for India in an unofficial Test match before Partition. After it he became the cricket coach at Sind Madrassah, a leading Karachi school previously attended by Jinnah, Pakistan's founder. In his new autobiography Hanif records that Durrani would use some of his meagre income to buy cricket equipment for his most able pupils. He also records that when Durrani umpired in school matches he would:

indulge in blatant favouritism by not giving us out if the ball hit the pads. If one of his favourite students got a thin edge and got caught he would call a no-ball! The opposition obviously always complained. One day I asked him (Durrani) why he did it, and he said: `Look, I want my students to be the best and the more opportunity they get, the more experienced they will become. These are the learning days.'

An interesting philosophical question arises here. It was the same when MCC toured Pakistan in 1951–52 and played a couple of unofficial Tests to see if the new country was worthy of becoming a full ICC member. Tom Graveney remembers that the umpiring was distinctly biased as Pakistan won one and drew the other of the two games. But Pakistan were given Test status as a consequence, which they quickly justified, and the cricket world would be decidedly the poorer without their original contribution. The helping hand which was given to Hanif may not have been fair but it was for the greater good.

In Hanif's purple patch, like Lara's, the Test triple-century came first. It was Pakistan's first tour of the West Indies in 1957–58, and Pakistan had fallen slightly behind on first innings, by 573 runs to be precise. Speed like Roy Gilchrist's on a bouncy Bridgetown pitch ( Tony Cozier still remembers the roar as a Gilchrist bouncer flew over batsman and wicket keeper) was not something Pakistan had experienced hitherto. But they have always been game for a challenge and gradually they learnt. At the end of the third day, as his side followed on, Hanif had reached 61, at the end of the fourth day 161, at the end of the fifth 270. At tea on the sixth he had made 334. By now he was so tired – and the glaring light off the sheeny pitch had so hurt his eyes in those days before sunglasses – that he hadn't realised that Hutton's 364 was the only goal left, and he nibbled a catch behind when 337, the match saved.

Now Hanif is a gentleman in the most literal sense, and never one to blow his own trumpet, which may be another reason why his reputation in England is not as high as it merits. But I remember when I was privileged to be given two long interviews by the Little Master that he wanted it to be known that he had batted for 16 hours and 39 minutes at Bridgetown, not 16 hours and ten minutes as Wisden has long stated. He even has a gramophone record made at the time by the broadcasting company which did the radio commentary on the Test, which makes the specific point that Hanif had batted not for 16 hours 40 minutes but 16 hours and 39 minutes, which is of course 999 minutes in all. It would surely have clinched his reputation even in England if he had been celebrated as the only man to bat in a first-class match for 1000 minutes.

In the same way he would like it known, and reasonably so, that the opposition when he made his 499, 11 months later, were not rubbish. Bahawalpur had in fact been Quaid-e-Azam champions a year or two before, and this was the semi-final of Pakistan's major domestic tournament, in the years when teams with first-class status were few. If they weren't great, they probably had a couple of decent spinners who knew what they were doing on a matting wicket. Bob Woolmer, who was passing through Karachi as an 11-year old and was dropped off at the Parsi Institute ground to spend the day there, recalls the Bahawalpur`weren't fantastic' as a general, young, impression; and that one of the fielders wore old-fashioned gym shoes; but above all that Hanif was scoring off almost every ball, along the ground. He had in fact reached 498 with two balls left of the day's play, but the scoreboard gave him 496. So when he hit the first of those two remaining deliveries into the outfield, he tried to get back for the second and was run out by a yard and a half (there was no Durrani to save him). If he had known he was on 498, he wouldn't have run off that ball and would have waited to have a go at the second. At this stage of the game at any rate the bowling sounds as if it was better than that of Durham's John Morris, who ushered Lara to his 501 at Edgbaston.

Hanif introduced his reverse-sweep to England in 1967 at Lord's, but not in the Test match there when he scored 187 not out in nine hours, which was a little slow although Pakistan were 99 for 6 chasing 369 in the first innings. Rather the reverse-sweep came in the one-day international between England and Pakistan in September, a match which is now said to have never happened (the Ministry of Statistical Truth states that the first one-day international was played in 1970–71). Hanif told me that he couldn't remember the bowler he played it against, but as England's attack consisted of John Snow, Ken Higgs, Tom Cartwright, Basil D'Oliveira and Fred Titmus– was this England's best-ever one-day attack, even though it never existed? – it was probably one of Fred's floaters which got the treatment. Brother Mushtaq should perhaps be bracketed as the equal-first progenitor of the reverse-sweep. But in any event the stroke should be considered a typical piece of Pakistani originality, far more easily born in a country not weighed down with coaches and their textbooks.

 Hanif's century in that Lord's Test was his only one in England, where he overall averaged only 26 in Tests (the 1954 series was a very low-scoring, for Pakistan at any rate, as they tasted wet pitches for the first time, while he was injured in 1962 and the tour manager was a military-appointed clown). But don't think he could only make runs in Pakistan or the subcontinent. His Test average was 46 at home, 42 abroad, and in his one Test in Australia, at Melbourne in Dec 1964, he scored 104 in the first innings and was given out by a shocker for 93 in his second (he also had to captain the side, and keep wicket).

 Hanif was one of the finest postwar batsmen all right – read his autobiography if you want further evidence – and the Mother Country doesn't really know best if she thinks otherwise. Perhaps we should stick to revising the laws.

© Wisden CricInfo Ltd