Gavaskar-Greatest

In today’s weekend blog, I am back on cricket. There have been many batsmen who seem to be great batsmen, maybe because of total runs scored, better average, and their good performances in  One Day Cricket, T20 cricket, and Test cricket. But if you take cricket as a gentleman’s game, you will find only two batsmen who can be considered the greatest, the first one is Don Bradman of Australia, and the second is India’s Sunil Gavaskar. Some might say why not Sachin Tendulkar in this list, as he has scored most runs and centuries in Test and One Day cricket.  But most of the cricket critics and experts are of the opinion that SUNIL GAVASKAR has to be the greatest, because Don Bradman in his era only played most of his Test cricket against England, while  Gavaskar has played against all the  Test playing nations during his playing years. Now let us see why he is the greatest.

Now consider the quality of bowling that Gavaskar faced in his career. In his era, Australia had Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thompson. England had Ian Botham, Bob Willis, and John Emburey. New Zealand had Richard Hadlee. In Pakistan, there was Imran Khan, Sarfaraz , Abdul Qadir, and a young Wasim Akram. Above all, the West Indies had a pace attack comprising of the most fearsome fast bowlers in the history of the game. Gavaskar had to encounter the agility of Malcolm Marshall, the skill of Andy Roberts, the accuracy of Joel Garner, and the sheer speed of Michael Holding. Please remember he played all of them without helmet, as the era of helmets had not started in the 70s. In the later stage of his career, he started using a skull cap under his Panama Cap. His 13 centuries against the West Indies make him one of the best batsmen ever to play the game. Let us not forget that he scored all his runs as an opener when the fast bowlers are fresh and at their best. He had never faced such fast bowling in domestic cricket.

In domestic cricket, he tackled several worthy titans of spin bowling. He had to tackle EAS Prasanna and BS Chandrashekhar when he played against Karnataka. Against Delhi, he encountered one of the best left-arm slow bowlers in the form of Bishan Singh Bedi, and while playing against Tamilnadu, he was up against S Venkataraghavan. Against tiny Haryana, he had to score against Kapil Dev and evergreen spin wizard Rajinder Goel. Perhaps no other batsman in the history of cricket faced such world-class bowlers. Add to that he did not have the advantage that  Gordon Greenidge had in the form of Desmond Haynes. For most of his career, he fought a lone battle at the top to overcome great bowlers.

In a Test match at Madras (now Chennai) against the West Indies in 1983, he decided to give himself some relief and luxury by not opening the batting. But when he came to bat the score was still zero for the loss of two wickets. It prompted Vivian Richards to tell Gavaskar “No matter where you start to bat, the scorecard will still read zero”.

Gavaskar knew that apart from his fellow Bombay (now Mumbai) teammate Dilip Vengsarkar, and his great brother-in-law GR Vishwanath, he could not rely on the Indian lower middle order to consistently come up with big scores. This made him a cautious batsman. However, when he wished, he could be a devastating batsman as found out by Malcolm Marshall and Michael Holding at Delhi Test in 1983. He scored 121 at almost a run-a-ball (it was a great thing in those days to score at such apace in a Test match), with 2 sixes and 15 fours. As a cautious player, he was not very proficient in One-day matches during his mid-70s to early 80s, but during the later part of his career, he tried to adapt himself to score at a faster pace in One Day matches. During the 1987 One Day World Cup, in a match against New Zealand, when he scored his only One Day century, which he did in 85 balls.

There are two Test matches, where he batted so splendidly against all odds, which made people realize his greatness. First is a Test match against Pakistan in Bangalore in October 1983, on the track which was a turning track. Pakistan was batting against the spin of Maninder Singh who got 7 for 27. But Pakistan also had two world-class spinners in Iqbal Qasim and Tauseef Ahmed, and India collapsed for 145. In the 2^nd innings Pakistani batted well, and they gave India a target of 220 runs. By the time Gavaskar started his second innings the wicket had become unplayable. Pakistani spinners were turning the ball very much, and the wicket also had tremendous bounce, hence scoring runs were almost impossible. Every ball had become a potential wicket-taking delivery but Gavaskar continued playing the spinners in his own way. A commentator commented that the wicket is turning so much that even great Gavaskar was mistiming his strokes. Yet he carried on as only he could manage to put the entire Pakistan team under pressure.

India had lost half side by 147, and he had scored 50% of those runs. He has assessed the pitch and realized that it would be useful to play his strokes late behind the wicket rather than driving in front of it. By the time he reached the 90s, he alone was standing between a first series win for Pakistan on Indian soil. But to every Indian cricket fan’s dismay, at 96 he got a ball from Iqbal Qasim that not only spun but bounced incredibly to take his glove- the slips did the rest.

The second Test match which is worth mentioning is the Oval Test against England in 1979. In this match, he waged a solitary battle to take his team to victory. Chasing the target of 438 runs, he had 200+ runs opening partnership with Chetan Chauhan, but after that, it was his lone battle. He scored a masterly 221 runs at a very fast pace and brought his team close to an impossible victory. If only the lower middle had shown some more urgency, the team would have chased the target on England soil. India lost the match by 9 runs.

The word great is often misused. Certainly not in the case of Sunil Gavaskar. The most assured and the greatest batsman cricket has ever seen.

Waiting for your views on this blog.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

29^th July 2022