Published on March 21, 2011
Sunil Manohar Gavaskar is, arguably, the most interesting player to have turned out for India on a cricket field. I do not say that lightly because many of those who have represented India in cricket have been real characters in their own right. But "Sunnybhai" was a one-off in all senses – he was orthodox, correct and technically perfect in his batting, mentally tough, highly intelligent and blessed with a superb temperament. He was also obstinate, petty, arrogant and a person who held plenty of grudges against those who managed to rub him the wrong way.
We all know about Gavaskar’s debut Test series, against the West Indies in 1971. He scored what seemed like millions of runs, thus setting for himself a standard of run-gathering that only his protégé Sachin Tendulkar would go on to beat in the following decades. Gavaskar was remarkably consistent throughout his long career and seemed to rarely go through a long spell without scoring runs. He was equally at ease on the dustbowls of India and the green tracks abroad. At a time when the rest of the India batting was nowhere near what it is hyped up to be today, the small figure of Gavaskar was the biggest obstacle for opposing bowlers for many years.
Gavaskar was the very definition of the orthodox opening batsman – extremely correct and disciplined in his shot selection, brave, and with the kind of concentration that batsmen brought up on the T20 diet can only dream about. And once he got settled in, there was very little that could affect the man from Mumbai. He could bat on and on and on, till the proverbial cows came home. Gavaskar also had every shot in the batting manual, though he was selective about playing some of them at various points in his career.
That, then, was Gavaskar the master batsman – but most observers would agree that the most important thing about him was the self-belief he brought to Indian cricket. India’s national team till the 1970s had some very talented cricketers but they remained poor tourists – losing easily even to weak teams on tours overseas. With Gavaskar around, things were not so easy as before for the opposition – here, at last, was a tough little character whose small frame belied the steel inside. I have never heard of a single incident where Gavaskar seemed intimidated by any fast bowler – and remember that this was an era dominated by some of the greatest speed merchants to have ever played the game. Of Gavaskar’s 34 Test hundreds, 13 were scored against the awesome Windies – the juggernauts of that era. And he wore no helmets till the fag end of his career, when he sported an odd-looking skull cap. So, enough said about his technical abilities!
Gavaskar's career was also notable for the timing of his retirement - he remains one of the few Indian cricket greats to have voluntarily quit the game when he was still playing very well. Being a cerebral man, he knew when the right time was to exit centerstage. Gavaskar hung up his cricket equipment immediately after he had played one of his most accomplished Test innings, a magnificent 96 on a crumbling track at Bangalore against the old enemy (Pakistan). It was a remarkable final knock and it was the ideal way for the original "Little Master" to leave the arena. Most people thought at that time that Gavaskar still had a couple of years left in him but he had already decided enough was enough.
My favourite childhood cricket-watching memories on TV mostly involve the 1983 home series against the world-beating Windies, who were smarting after the surprise loss to India in the World Cup final just a few months earlier. Clive Lloyd’s men came to India determined to crush the hosts and they managed that with some ease, winning the six-match series 3-0. But Gavaskar’s battles with the Windies pace attack, and especially with the great Malcolm Marshall, would become the stuff of legend. He took on Marshall and company head-on, fighting fire with fire, and without Gavaskar’s resistance, India would probably have lost that series 6-0. At Delhi, in the second Test, Gavaskar unleashed even the strokes (the hook and the pull) he had given up for some time and made one of his best-ever hundreds, a superb 121. There were many other great knocks from him in that series and though India was beaten black and blue Gavaskar was one of the few Indians who stood tall amid the ruins.
As a captain he was a natural choice after he became a senior in the national team but he quickly became known as a defensive skipper. Some of that accusation was merited as Gavaskar was never known for his aggressive captaincy skills at any stage of his career but one has to remember that for much of his time as Indian captain he was hobbled by a mediocre bowling attack (something that MS Dhoni should know about, by now!). Only after Kapil Dev came along did the Indian attack get some teeth.
Gavaskar was also accused of plenty of bias in team selection and, like most captains from Mumbai before and after him, he had his own favourite players and cronies. I remember the 1982 tour of England when Gavaskar took along two journeymen cricketers from Mumbai (Ghulam Parkar and Suru Nayak, if you want to really know their names) who had absolutely no business representing the country.
Gavaskar was also part of the most colourful controversies any cricketer has been involved in. The most interesting of them occurred in 1975 during the inaugural World Cup in England – after the hosts had piled up 300+ runs (this was back in the 60-overs era), India replied with Gavaskar opening as usual. But he inexplicably carried his bat through the Indian reply, managing to score just 36 runs off 174 balls! While he went to great lengths later trying to justify why he batted like that - one version was that he had tried his best to get out but couldn’t, which was an awful excuse when you think of it - one suspects he did this because he never really liked the one-day game and probably just thought of getting some valuable match practice in what was surely a lost cause. But this was an extraordinary blot in what was fast becoming a glittering career. Gavaskar did have some successes in the one-day version towards the end of his career but he was primarily a purist whose natural liking was only for Test matches.
There were more interesting incidents to come – at Melbourne in 1981, Gavaskar threw a tantrum after being given out lbw to the great Dennis Lillee and tried to forced his hapless opening partner Chetan Chauhan to join him in a walkout. India would have forfeited that Test to the Aussies in that case. Thankfully, the Indian team manager quickly stepped in at the boundary line and prevented Chauhan being pulled out. Ironically India would go on to win this match, their first Test win Down Under! Gavaskar later said he was irritated by the Aussies’ sledging also but that was no excuse for his unsporting overreaction, as he himself would surely have known.
There was more bizarre behaviour in the years ahead – refusing to play at Eden Gardens after the crowd there abused him and his wife, batting left-handed in a Ranji Trophy match to show his dislike for spinner Raghuram Bhat and, of course, his unseemly spats (real and rumoured) with Kapil Dev, the other great folk hero of his era. That was all pure Gavaskar – a man whose likes and dislikes were worn proudly on his sleeve, for all to see.
But all these should not take away anything from Gavaskar's colossal batting achievements – Gavaskar, like a true Mumbaikar, was obsessed with the task of scoring runs. Tendulkar would, as we all know, take run-gathering to another level in the next couple of decades but he was merely following the template set by Gavaskar. I am sure Gavaskar sees Tendulkar as the one he would have chosen most to have beaten most of his batting records but I also wonder at times what his real feelings are, about the younger man. We know Gavaskar now as one of the leading cheerleaders in the mammoth Tendulkar fan club (along with fellow Mumbaiwallahs like Ravi Shastri and Sanjay Manjrekar) but does all that adoring adulation hide some amount of envy or jealousy? Hmmm ...
I would love to read a professional biography of Gavaskar - I have been mystified as to why no one has ever attempted it so far. There is no lack of competent cricket writers in India and yet, as far as I know, no one has taken up the challenge of exploring the psyche of India’s most fascinating and complex cricketer. There have been a couple of coffee-table tomes and some poorly edited collection of essays on the man and his career but nothing that are really worthy of Gavaskar’s vast contributions to Indian cricket. Strange, right, when you come to think of it?
Maybe Gavaskar himself might correct this by trying his hand at an autobiography soon. He can write pretty well and he has a dry sense of humour, judging by his regular newspaper columns and Sunny Days (the first and the best of his memoirs which came out in the mid-1970s). He has so many stories to tell and it would be a huge loss if he did not share them with the rest of the cricket-reading public before the memories start fading. The hero who gave Indian cricket its first dose of self-confidence and who was one of the first Indians to look at cricket in purely professional terms deserves no less than that.
Sunil Manohar Gavaskar is, arguably, the most interesting player to have turned out for India on a cricket field. I do not say that lightly because many of those who have represented India in cricket have been real characters in their own right. But "Sunnybhai" was a one-off in all senses – he was orthodox, correct and technically perfect in his batting, mentally tough, highly intelligent and blessed with a superb temperament. He was also obstinate, petty, arrogant and a person who held plenty of grudges against those who managed to rub him the wrong way.
We all know about Gavaskar’s debut Test series, against the West Indies in 1971. He scored what seemed like millions of runs, thus setting for himself a standard of run-gathering that only his protégé Sachin Tendulkar would go on to beat in the following decades. Gavaskar was remarkably consistent throughout his long career and seemed to rarely go through a long spell without scoring runs. He was equally at ease on the dustbowls of India and the green tracks abroad. At a time when the rest of the India batting was nowhere near what it is hyped up to be today, the small figure of Gavaskar was the biggest obstacle for opposing bowlers for many years.
Gavaskar was the very definition of the orthodox opening batsman – extremely correct and disciplined in his shot selection, brave, and with the kind of concentration that batsmen brought up on the T20 diet can only dream about. And once he got settled in, there was very little that could affect the man from Mumbai. He could bat on and on and on, till the proverbial cows came home. Gavaskar also had every shot in the batting manual, though he was selective about playing some of them at various points in his career.
That, then, was Gavaskar the master batsman – but most observers would agree that the most important thing about him was the self-belief he brought to Indian cricket. India’s national team till the 1970s had some very talented cricketers but they remained poor tourists – losing easily even to weak teams on tours overseas. With Gavaskar around, things were not so easy as before for the opposition – here, at last, was a tough little character whose small frame belied the steel inside. I have never heard of a single incident where Gavaskar seemed intimidated by any fast bowler – and remember that this was an era dominated by some of the greatest speed merchants to have ever played the game. Of Gavaskar’s 34 Test hundreds, 13 were scored against the awesome Windies – the juggernauts of that era. And he wore no helmets till the fag end of his career, when he sported an odd-looking skull cap. So, enough said about his technical abilities!
Gavaskar's career was also notable for the timing of his retirement - he remains one of the few Indian cricket greats to have voluntarily quit the game when he was still playing very well. Being a cerebral man, he knew when the right time was to exit centerstage. Gavaskar hung up his cricket equipment immediately after he had played one of his most accomplished Test innings, a magnificent 96 on a crumbling track at Bangalore against the old enemy (Pakistan). It was a remarkable final knock and it was the ideal way for the original "Little Master" to leave the arena. Most people thought at that time that Gavaskar still had a couple of years left in him but he had already decided enough was enough.
My favourite childhood cricket-watching memories on TV mostly involve the 1983 home series against the world-beating Windies, who were smarting after the surprise loss to India in the World Cup final just a few months earlier. Clive Lloyd’s men came to India determined to crush the hosts and they managed that with some ease, winning the six-match series 3-0. But Gavaskar’s battles with the Windies pace attack, and especially with the great Malcolm Marshall, would become the stuff of legend. He took on Marshall and company head-on, fighting fire with fire, and without Gavaskar’s resistance, India would probably have lost that series 6-0. At Delhi, in the second Test, Gavaskar unleashed even the strokes (the hook and the pull) he had given up for some time and made one of his best-ever hundreds, a superb 121. There were many other great knocks from him in that series and though India was beaten black and blue Gavaskar was one of the few Indians who stood tall amid the ruins.
As a captain he was a natural choice after he became a senior in the national team but he quickly became known as a defensive skipper. Some of that accusation was merited as Gavaskar was never known for his aggressive captaincy skills at any stage of his career but one has to remember that for much of his time as Indian captain he was hobbled by a mediocre bowling attack (something that MS Dhoni should know about, by now!). Only after Kapil Dev came along did the Indian attack get some teeth.
Gavaskar was also accused of plenty of bias in team selection and, like most captains from Mumbai before and after him, he had his own favourite players and cronies. I remember the 1982 tour of England when Gavaskar took along two journeymen cricketers from Mumbai (Ghulam Parkar and Suru Nayak, if you want to really know their names) who had absolutely no business representing the country.
Gavaskar was also part of the most colourful controversies any cricketer has been involved in. The most interesting of them occurred in 1975 during the inaugural World Cup in England – after the hosts had piled up 300+ runs (this was back in the 60-overs era), India replied with Gavaskar opening as usual. But he inexplicably carried his bat through the Indian reply, managing to score just 36 runs off 174 balls! While he went to great lengths later trying to justify why he batted like that - one version was that he had tried his best to get out but couldn’t, which was an awful excuse when you think of it - one suspects he did this because he never really liked the one-day game and probably just thought of getting some valuable match practice in what was surely a lost cause. But this was an extraordinary blot in what was fast becoming a glittering career. Gavaskar did have some successes in the one-day version towards the end of his career but he was primarily a purist whose natural liking was only for Test matches.
There were more interesting incidents to come – at Melbourne in 1981, Gavaskar threw a tantrum after being given out lbw to the great Dennis Lillee and tried to forced his hapless opening partner Chetan Chauhan to join him in a walkout. India would have forfeited that Test to the Aussies in that case. Thankfully, the Indian team manager quickly stepped in at the boundary line and prevented Chauhan being pulled out. Ironically India would go on to win this match, their first Test win Down Under! Gavaskar later said he was irritated by the Aussies’ sledging also but that was no excuse for his unsporting overreaction, as he himself would surely have known.
There was more bizarre behaviour in the years ahead – refusing to play at Eden Gardens after the crowd there abused him and his wife, batting left-handed in a Ranji Trophy match to show his dislike for spinner Raghuram Bhat and, of course, his unseemly spats (real and rumoured) with Kapil Dev, the other great folk hero of his era. That was all pure Gavaskar – a man whose likes and dislikes were worn proudly on his sleeve, for all to see.
But all these should not take away anything from Gavaskar's colossal batting achievements – Gavaskar, like a true Mumbaikar, was obsessed with the task of scoring runs. Tendulkar would, as we all know, take run-gathering to another level in the next couple of decades but he was merely following the template set by Gavaskar. I am sure Gavaskar sees Tendulkar as the one he would have chosen most to have beaten most of his batting records but I also wonder at times what his real feelings are, about the younger man. We know Gavaskar now as one of the leading cheerleaders in the mammoth Tendulkar fan club (along with fellow Mumbaiwallahs like Ravi Shastri and Sanjay Manjrekar) but does all that adoring adulation hide some amount of envy or jealousy? Hmmm ...
I would love to read a professional biography of Gavaskar - I have been mystified as to why no one has ever attempted it so far. There is no lack of competent cricket writers in India and yet, as far as I know, no one has taken up the challenge of exploring the psyche of India’s most fascinating and complex cricketer. There have been a couple of coffee-table tomes and some poorly edited collection of essays on the man and his career but nothing that are really worthy of Gavaskar’s vast contributions to Indian cricket. Strange, right, when you come to think of it?
Maybe Gavaskar himself might correct this by trying his hand at an autobiography soon. He can write pretty well and he has a dry sense of humour, judging by his regular newspaper columns and Sunny Days (the first and the best of his memoirs which came out in the mid-1970s). He has so many stories to tell and it would be a huge loss if he did not share them with the rest of the cricket-reading public before the memories start fading. The hero who gave Indian cricket its first dose of self-confidence and who was one of the first Indians to look at cricket in purely professional terms deserves no less than that.