Sunil Gavaskar

Before Sachin Tendulkar took apart attacks, the original little master dominated in the early seventies and brought them a lot of pride in the next decade and a half. Sunil Manohar Gavaskar, a man synonymous with grit, character, and defiance, brought about a revolution in Test batsmanship - one of extraordinary consistency against some of the most fierce and intimidating bowling attacks of all time.

Arguably one of the greatest opening batsmen of all time, Sunil Gavaskar was statistically most successful. An immaculate technique, unerring concentration, and most importantly, daring nerve defined his batting. In an age of the fearsome and blood-thirsty West Indian pacers, it took enormous courage to bat without a helmet - something Gavaskar did over a period of 16 years, and through the 10,000 runs that he scored. With the latent fear of a cracked skull, Gavaskar maintained incredible composure at the crease with his astute judgment of line and length and his complete game of both the front foot and the back foot.

One often speaks of Rahul Dravid and eulogizes him as the wall, but the man who inspired the phrase "putting a price on your wicket" remains Sunil Manohar Gavaskar, the Emperor of grit. Nevertheless, this did not mean he was short on strokes. With a technique so versatile, he had nearly every shot in the book, but his grit and stoic at the tie overshadowed all else.

With a record (at the time) 34 Test hundreds, he was the first batsman from India to exhibit consistency at the world stage, and despite his record being broken by his successor Sachin Tendulkar, his contribution to Indian cricket lay far beyond numbers. Having dominated the most successful team of his era, Sunil Gavaskar was indeed the most valuable batsman of Indian cricket at the time and the most prized wicket for the opposition.

Rise to the top

Sunil Gavaskar, the wunderkind, shot to local fame at the age of 17 when he was named India's Best Schoolboy Cricketer in 1966. After an incredibly consistent start by this precocious wonder-kid, Gavaskar was immediately roped into Mumbai's Ranji squad but only made his Ranji debut against Karnataka during the 1968/69 season, two years after he came into the squad. After a failure to start with, he was severely criticized and was even accused of making wrongful use of his influential uncle, Madhav Mantri (former Indian Test player). However, history is our witness that Gavaskar silenced critics very soon by slamming a series of hundreds in Ranji cricket thereafter, and he was rather hastily pushed into India's Test squad, for the infamous tour of the West Indies in 1970/71.

It was evident in his debut series, that Sunny was here to stay. His batting transcended the level of his peers as the little champion bulldozed long-standing records. He made a joke out of the alleged "baptism by fire" against the West Indian pace bowlers on his way to 4 hundreds, 3 fifties, and 774 runs @154.80 in four Tests. He knocked out the last of his naysayers with a hundred and a double-hundred in the first and second innings of the final Test match in Port of Spain. Gavaskar became only the second batsmen in Test history to achieve this prestigious feat after Doug Walters (and, to this day, the only Indian to do so). He had a bit of a hangover from this early success and a subsequent dip in form, Gavaskar regained his touch in 1975 and never looked back.

His Finest Moments

Gavaskar's biggest achievement of the time was registering India's highest Test score at the time - 236 vs. the West Indies, against whom he seemed to have taken a special liking. With Malcolm Marshall, Andy Roberts, Michael Holding and Winston Davis running in at him, Gavaskar terrorized the men from the Caribbean and ended up with an average of 65.45 against them. One of his finest knocks in Test cricket came against England at the Oval in 1979, in a match that came to be known as the Great Chase that wasn't. India were set a mammoth target of 438 in roughly 500 minutes. The visitors began Day 5 at 76/0, needing 362 runs on the final day, which started off quietly. However, Gavaskar, not particularly known for smashing the leather off the ball, picked up the pace brought India within striking distance, before being dismissed for 221. England managed to induce some panic and the teams settled for a draw, an agonizing nine runs short of a victory in one of the closest finishes in Test history - a draw that changed the image of India as a cricketing nation. Gavaskar was also a part of India's 1983 World Cup winning team, but hardly achieved the level of success he did in Test cricket in the shorter format, scoring only one hundred in over a hundred matches. In fact, he is often, to this day, criticized for playing one of the most puzzling innings in World Cup history - 36 off 174 balls, chasing 334 in 60 overs against England in the 1979 tournament. Nevertheless, the good always overshadowed the bad in case of Sunil Gavaskar, as he contributed to yet another scarcely believable run-chase of 406, this time against his favoured West Indies team in 1976, contributing 102 as an opening batsman as his compatriot Gundappa Vishwanath sealed the deal with another hundred in the middle-order.

Post his retirement, Gavaskar has served as a television commentator and columnist and has taken on various roles with the BCCI. He also briefly served as chairman of the ICC cricket committee but stepped down in controversial circumstances as he returned to commentary. A vocal and often humourous character off the field, Gavaskar has continued to be an influential figure in Indian cricket long after his retirement. Nevertheless, the original Little Master will always be remembered for his playing days - the Sunny Days.

By Rishi Roy

As of 13th July 2018