Sunil Manohar Gavaskar

OV Digital Desk
3 Min Read
Sunil Gavaskar

Sunil Manohar Gavaskar is an Indian cricket commentator and former cricketer representing India and Bombay from the early 1970s to the late 1980s. He was one of the greatest opening batsmen of all time, and certainly the most successful. His game was built around a near-perfect technique and enormous powers of concentration.

He was widely admired for his technique against fast bowling, with a particularly high average of 65.45 against the West Indies team, who possessed a four-pronged fast bowling attack regarded as the most vicious in Test history.

Early Life

He was Born on 10 July 1949 in Bombay, India. In his first Test series at Port of Spain against the West Indies in 1971, He scored a whopping 774 in four matches as India registered a historic 1-0 series win. His 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.

Gavaskar did not have the best of times in ODIs. Having made his ODI debut in 1974 against England, he found it tough to replicate his Test cricket exploits in the then shortest format of the game. His innings of 36 not out of a whopping 174 deliveries earned him a lot of flak, but this was the way he continued batting till his penultimate ODI. Against New Zealand, he cracked the then fastest World Cup hundred for an Indian despite running a high temperature. Incidentally, it was also his only ODI hundred.

Awards and Records

Gavaskar is a recipient of the Indian civilian honours of the Padma Shri and the Padma Bhushan. He was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame in 2009. In 2012, he was awarded the Col CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award for Cricket in India.

He was the first person to score centuries in both innings of a Test match three times. He was the first Test batsman to score 10,000 Test runs in a career. He has the maximum no. of runs & centuries scored by a player against West Indies—2,749 runs & 13 centuries.

He set world records during his career for the most Test runs, and most Test centuries scored by any batsman.

Retirement

Post-retirement, he has served as a television commentator, analyst and columnist, ICC Match Referee, BCCI President, served as chairman of the ICC cricket committee.

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