Sunil Manohar Gavaskar was the first Indian Batsman to bring STEEL into the Indian batting line up. Before Gavaskar, Indian batsmen had plenty of charm but it was a brittle sort of charm, pretty to look at but unlikely to be of much use if things got rough..
As the best opening batsman of the last half century and arguably of all time, Sunny as he is affectionately known, faced the Best of the Best fast bowlers, men such as Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Joel Garner, Dennis Lillee, Jeff Thomson, Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee, BobWillis and John Snow just to mention the very best, with courage, aplomb and considerable success and all without a helmet!
Gavaskar is a Statisticians Delight and no mention of his career can be without a section highlighting some of the most amazing of his statistical achievements. Let's start at the beginning and move along highlighting only the most fantastic of his statistical achievements, which if outlined in detail would consume pages and pages.
Gavaskar scored the highest number of runs in a debut series in the entire history of cricket. He scored 774 memorable runs in 1971 against the West Indies, with an amazing average of 154.80. This is STILL the highest by an Indian batsman in ANY series, debut or otherwise. And he actually was not picked for the first Test of a five match series. The mind boggles to imagine what the total would have been had he played all five matches!
By the time he had played 50 test matches he had already scored 20 Test centuries, i.e. he scored a century almost every other match. This is a proportion achieved by only one other batsman in the entire history of the game, one Sir Donald George Bradman.
He scored a century in each innings of a match on three separate occasions, a world record, including on one occasion a century and a double century in the same Test match. And he achieved these feats against the toughest opponents, twice against the West Indies, once at home and once in the Caribbean, and once against Pakistan in Pakistan!
He scored thirteen centuries against the West Indies between 1971 and 1987 facing such legendary fast bowlers as Roberts, Holding, Garner, Croft and Marshall. No other batsman has scored even ten centuries against the West Indies pace attack.
He was involved in an Indian record, ten century opening partnerships with Chetan Chauhan, his most successful partner, including a huge 213 run partnership as India nearly chased down 438 to win at the Oval in 1979. During that match he scored 179 runs in a single days play, still the most runs scored by an Indian batsman in a single day in a Test match.
He was the first batsman to score 10,000 Test runs and still holds the record for the highest number of Test centuries of thirty-four. Finally, no other full-time opening batsman in the last 50 years of the game has a career average over 50. Not Sir Geoffrey Boycott, not Gordon Greenidge, nor any of the moderns. This fact speaks volumes about the absolute MASTERY he had as an opener.
Another hallmark of his greatness as a batsman was his ability to play his best when the chips are down. The odds are usually stacked against a batsman in the 4th innings of a Test match because this is when the pitch is at its worst, after days of wear and tear, often including roughs left by bowlers footmarks. The fact is most batsmen are much less successful in the last innings of a Test match, and only a select few, like Gavaskar, actually do better when faced with adversity. It seemed the tougher the challenge the better Sunny played. So it comes as no surprise that he has scored the highest number of runs by any batsman in entire history of Test cricket in the 4th innings of Tests. Gavaskar scored nearly 1400 runs at an average approaching 60 with a record 4 centuries, including a highest score of 221, just 2 runs behind the highest ever 4th innings score of 223, by George Headley in 1930.
Because of his penchant to battle against the odds, India became known as the 4th innings wonders during his prime. His great 4th innings knocks are too numerous to all recount, but suffice to say they have often taken India close to victory or led to honorable draws. The four most famous knocks Gavaskar played in the 4th innings of Tests resulted in four different results. His solid 102 at Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1975-76 laid the foundation for India to win the match chasing 403. His flawless 221 at the Oval, London in 1979 took India to the brink of victory, but a flurry of wickets at the end, resulted in India settling for a draw at 429-8, chasing 438 for victory. His heroic 90 at Madras in 1986 allowed India to tie a game that most thought they would lose the day before, but which they should have won in the end.
Gavaskar's final innings in Test matches was another 4th innings gem, a masterly 96 on a Bangalore wicket that was turning square, against the guile of Iqbal Qasim and Tauseef Ahmed, two Pakistani spinners who along with Abdul Qadir were the cross-border version of the famous Indian Spin Trio. In his autobiography Imran Khan the winning Pakistani Captain has this to say about that innings: "When Qasim finally dismissed Gavaskar for a brilliant 96 we knew the match was over." He wasn't alone in that assessment, as the crowd seemed to sense it too, and despite a few lusty blows by home town hero Roger Binny, Pakistan won by 16 runs.
As a Captain Gavaskar brought this same battling attitude to bear. He always first made sure India did not lose, before going for a win. While Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi got India into the winning habit, both at home and overseas with 9 wins, he also suffered 19 losses. Ajit Wadekar was a bit more successful and had 4 wins and 4 losses in his 16 matches as captain, before he quit prematurely. Bishan Singh Bedi was the opposite of Gavaskar and often tried to attack and play "chivalrous" cricket, even if it meant India lost. His record of 6 wins and 11 losses in just 22 matches shows his profligate tendencies. Gavaskar on the other hand won 9 matches and lost only 8, while drawing as many as 30 matches. But the fact remains that Sunil Gavaskar along with Sourav Ganguly are the only Indian captains with winning records.
However statistics are only part of the picture of this legendary batsman. There are the memories of a whole generation who looked up to him like the present generation does to Tendulkar. A generation who grew up in the shadow of his career and never knew of Indian batsmen that cringed before fast bowling as previous generations did. Before Gavaskar it was common for Indian batsmen to be labeled as afraid of genuine pace. And while there were many exceptions, such as the brilliant Vinoo Mankad, the plucky Vijay Manjrekar, and others, the tag did have a kernel of truth to it. And who could blame them? Indian batsmen rarely faced anything above medium pace at home, and that too on slow pitches that stifled bounce. That in such arid conditions for playing genuine fast bowling, India produced two superb players of high pace, Gavaskar and Viswanath, is quite remarkable. It was thus quite understandable that young amateur batsmen across India in the 1970s tried to copy Sunny's immaculate straight drives and Vishy's flashing square cuts in their matches in gullies and maidans across India.
Many anecdotes have been written about the man, showing his attention to detail, his impish sense of humor, his innate sense of always being a student of the game, and his immense respect for the greats of the game: qualities that he now brings to the commentary booth.
But I'd like to share a personal anectode to give a complete picture of the Professional way he played the game.
I don't know the man, but had the pleasure of meeting him and seeing him play in a club match in the mid 1980s in Los Angeles, California (of all places!) against a bunch of truly club class cricketers (my colleagues and I).
Even against such mediocre bowlers (to put it mildly) he did not just go out and slog. He played each ball on its merits, driving most of them crisply through the gaps but along the ground for blistering fours. Only after he had reached fifty, did he begin lofting the ball for sixes past the trees on a pretty small ground. Clearly he could have done that from ball one, but he had a method of playing and maybe he was also showing us, by example, how a real Test match batsman plays. This incident sums up the man.
