1) When Sunny was born , by some mistake he was interchanged with fisherman's baby and no one realised that except by his uncle who had seen the new born baby .The fisherman's wife flatly refused to hand over her child. Gavaskar has some birth mark in his ears which his uncle used to convince the lady and somehow got his nephew back .Wonder what would have happened otherwise ?
2) Then came the challenge of naming the baby as his paternal aunt had decided to name him Maruti and his mother didn't like the name so after so much of deliberations, Sunil was identified as name which according to some reference matches Maruti , else we would have Maruti Gavaskar as a legend. Isnt it?
3) As a kid , he wanted his maternal uncle and former India player Madhav Mantri to handover test cricketer's sweater to him and his uncle did not bog down to the demand and told him to earn it on his own , thankfully as a kid Gavaskar listened , else?
4) The world complains about Gavaskar dealing in boundaries only and rarely hit sixes but the secret to it lied in Girgaon locality.To ensure no window panes were broken Gavaskar practiced hitting on the ground which made him one of the best players not getting out to mistimed shots .Had he come from any other parts of India , having huge open space then?
5) Sunny could not score a century on his debut against Windies but hit the winning run and went on to pile a still valid record of 774 runs by a debutant and remember , he was not part of the playing 11 in the first test . Had he played the first test ?
6) The new generation of cricket suffers from nervous ninety syndrome , Gavaskar never faced such an issues as according to him , he only counted boundaries and post 25 boundaries he treated it as a century , also he never heard any noise on the ground , as he switched off his ears while batting , such was his concentration. Had he not been so focused then ?
Apart from these ifs and buts , Gavaskar was a genius and was a class apart scoring 13 centuries and more than 2700 runs against the mighty Windies wherein even the look at the names of the Windies players would make any batsman jittery .
Gavaskar was always known as no-nonsense captain who once famously asked one of the superstars to keep his girlfriend out of the hotel as it was against the team policy , few would reckon this as a feud between these two legends but he helped the same legend when he realised that one of the tainted players is recording the conversation on match fixing and alarmed this guy not to say anything which would put him under the lense !!
As a commentator he made Indian English acceptable all over the world.
A genius who ignited Indian spirit amongst a generation , made Indian cricket one of the richest sports in Country and made the world take a note of India all through his life.
Such gems are gift of God and Maharashtra being the special recipient of such prowess , we wish and pray the almighty for long life for Gavaskar ..and let the cricket be bestowed upon by his genius for years to come .
Happy Birthday Sunnybhai !!!
🙇 
-Jayawant
No comments:
Post a Comment