Farokh Manekshaw Engineer is known as one of the greatest Wicket-keepers of India, and also considered amongst the most exciting and colourful personalities of Indian cricket. This wonderful and very talented cricketer started his international and domestic career at almost the same time unlike most of the other players. He was born on 25 February 1938 at Mumbai in Maharashtra and he started playing the game of Cricket in a very young age.

Early Life of Farokh Engineer
He started playing for the National Team of India in the year of 1961-62 when he played in the second Test against England at Green Park Stadium in Kanpur. In his debut Test, he scored 33 runs in the only innings that he played. Though he started playing as a wicket-keeper, he became a very much recognised Batsman by the end of his career. He was really a very much entertaining and hard-hitting Batsman of his time. Though he has scored only two centuries in his entire career he was a very useful Batsman for his team whenever his team needed him. He scored one of those two centuries against the most powerful team of the time West Indies when he scored a wonderful knock of 121. In fact, he was a great entertainer by nature and he was very much competitive as well. Because of this very characteristic only, he has played some really hard-hitting knocks against some of the greatest fast bowlers of that time.

Career of Farokh Engineer
Farokh Engineer played 46 Tests and only five One-Day International matches. He played his first One-Day International match against England in the Prudential Trophy held at Leeds in the year of 1974. In the 1975 World Cup, he scored a total of 114 runs in five matches at an average of 38. He played his last Test match against the West Indies in 1974-75 at Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai where he failed to score even a single run. He played his last One-Day International match against New Zealand at Manchester. Though he was short and bulky in his body shape, he was amazingly very lively behind the stumps. His liveliness always kept the close-in fielders very alert and on their toes. However, his running between the wickets was a bit inconsistent, but in keeping with the rest of him, he was entertaining as ever.

Cricket Statistics
Batting and Fielding Averages

	Mat	Inns	NO	Runs	HS	Ave	BF	SR	100	50	4s	6s	Ct	St
Tests	46	87	3	2611	121	31.08			2	16		2	66	16
ODIs	5	4	1	114	54*	38.00	195	58.46	0	1	13	0	3	1
First-class	335	510	55	13436	192	29.52			13	69			704	120
List A	160	150	21	3008	93	23.31			0	12			159	31

Bowling Averages

	Mat	Inns	Balls	Runs	Wkts	BBI	BBM	Ave	Econ	SR	4w	5w	10
Tests	46	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
ODIs	5	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
First-class	335		132	117	1	1/40		117.00	5.31	132.0		0	0
List A	160	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Farokh Engineer was very popular with all the cricket fans of India in his time and this is why he worked as a model of "Brylcream" in the years of 1970`s and the Government of India also honoured him by presenting him the prestigious "Padma Shri" Award in the year of 1973. Though, he mainly played for Mumbai and India, Farokh Engineer did play for a very long time for the county cricket club in England named as Lancashire. For this connection with the County, he later decided to settle down permanently in England.