Life’s biggest surprises come in small packages and being a cricket fan, specifically an Indian cricket fan, I couldn’t agree more.
February was moving out of the shackles of Bombay’s mild winter and welcoming the spring of 1971. And there was a spring to the stride of this 21-year-old local boy, as he had been drafted into the Indian team, which was leaving for a test series with the West Indies in their territory.
And as I said, the package was small. Standing just above five –feet, Sunil Manohar Gavaskar was an obscure name then. Obscure then, but now his name is a household metaphor for great batting technique.
Sunil Manohar Gavaskar was on his first series for the country, on his way to fame, success, on his way straight into the open arms of destiny.
“Oh the times, they are-a-changing …” sang Bob Dylan. Gavaskar on the threshold of his twenties and his destiny might well have hummed that. It was not an easy journey from Shivaji Park ( A massive public park where cricket is practiced in every nook and corner) to the Air-India plane. Consistent performances in domestic cricket had earned him a well-deserved place in the side.
The Caribbean Islands have been well known for their hard and bouncy wickets. In fact the word “Fast bowler” had become synonymous with them. One would have assumed they had a factory manufacturing these six-feet-plus bowlers considering the number that sat on the bench competing for a place in the final eleven.
These bowlers could get the ball to do all sorts of things, in their hands the red cherry would metamorphosize into a hand grenade. And when the ball was new and hard…. Woe be gone to the batsman at the striker’s end.
Gavaskar knew this. He had been chosen as an opening batsman and if he made it to the final 11, he needed more than an armor shield.
He started off prolifically in the warm-up matches with three 50’s and one century. But low score in his 4`th game cost him a place in the first test. And maybe that is why he always says “A batsman is as good as his last innings”.
But he didn’t patronize the bench for a long time. Soon enough the 683’rd Test Match was played on March 6 at Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.
Sunil Gavaskar walked into the green turf of Queens Park Oval for the first time, little did he know that he had walked on to the steps of eternity, and with every step he was moving closer to immortality in the world of cricket.
