So Gavaskar did not need to do anything else to leave his stamp on independent India. But he did. After a brief hiccup in his next few Tests — as if to confirm that he was, after all, mortal — the centuries flowed again; the records tumbled; greatness became a quality we learned to take for granted. There were the extraordinary thirteen centuries against the West Indies’ feared pace batteries. There was the dazzling 102 in Trinidad in 1975–76 to steer India to an astonishing victory with the then highest-winning target ever successfully chased in a Test. There was the 221 he made against England at the Oval in 1979 when India nearly pulled it off again, chasing an even higher total. There was the 340 he made in 1981–82 in one remorseless inning in the Ranji Trophy. And then, in 1987, after one of the best innings ever seen on an Indian cricket ground — a sublime 96 against Pakistan on a vicious turner at Bangalore — Sunil Gavaskar retired, at the peak of his powers. He wanted to leave when the world was asking “why?” rather than “when?”
I remember Gavaskar in his pomp at the crease, all five foot six inches of him rapt in concentration; the white shirt immaculate, its top two buttons undone, a glint of gold around his neck; the dark eyes steady in their gaze under a wide-brimmed floppy sun hat; the boyish charm supplanted by a wary stillness, ears cocked, knees and back bent, every sinew tensed but ready. And then the calm deliberateness of the stroke, the eyes never leaving the balclass="underline" the solidity of the defense, the precision of the offdrive, the liberating punch through midwicket, the sudden unleashing of the cut. He could do it all, and he knew what not to do: it was once said of him, on a spiteful pitch, that his best stroke was one he did not play, at a rearing delivery that a lesser batsman would have edged. When Sunil Gavaskar stood at the crease, it was as if a wall had been constructed across the wicket, and captains and bowlers knew they would have to work very hard for their reward. In 198 Test innings, Gavaskar was bowled just thirty-three times, and on fewer than half those occasions did he miss the ball altogether. In other words, in a career in which he faced some thirty thousand deliveries, he was beaten and bowled by perhaps twenty of them. That is a measure of his skill, of his concentration, and of the impregnability he brought to the top of a fragile Indian batting order. As Sir Gary Sobers reminded the world, his achievement is all the more striking in that he could not make any easy runs off the amiable Indian bowling attack.
Of course, not everything in Gavaskar's career was perfection. Having nearly broken his mother's nose with a hard-hit shot in a game of corridor cricket at home in his boyhood, Gavaskar developed a wary cautiousness that Freud could have explained better than Cardus. It too often translated itself into excessive defensiveness, so that, for all his high scores, Gavaskar never threatened to tear apart an attack. Rather, he frustrated bowlers into submission by wearing them down. His one-day record is, by his standards, modest: an average of 35.13 in 108 matches, with only one century, a tale forever blighted by that bizarre inning in the 1975 World Cup at Lord's when he made 36 not out in sixty overs. (Gavaskar himself gave four reasons for his appalling performance, each of which is worse than the previous one: “1. I didn't play sixty overs myself. 2. I couldn't force the pace and couldn't get out even when I tried to. 3. As soon as the ball was delivered, my feet would move to a position for a defensive shot. 4. The awful noise made by the crowd didn't help my thinking.”)
For a man whose temperament at the crease was so calm and measured, Gavaskar also lost his cool surprisingly often in print and on the field. His highly readable but tactless book Sunny Days was marred by intemperate references to West Indian crowds (as “savages” who should “go back to the jungles” whence they came) and English umpires (“David Constant was constant — in his support of England”), which caused great offense in those countries. (The resulting hostility to him in the Caribbean led to his pulling out of the 1979–80 tour of the West Indies, which was then canceled.) Worse still was his attempt in Melbourne on the 1980–81 tour of Australia to walk out and concede the match when he was given, as he thought, unjustly out. His action in calling his opening partner, Chetan Chauhan, off the field with him was not only thoughtless, it disrupted Chauhan's concentration, costing him his wicket shortly thereafter, and it looked even more foolish when India won the Test that Gavaskar had had to be prevented from throwing away.
This episode aside, Gavaskar was also a disappointing captain, leading the side without imagination or vision, showing very little feel for the pace or direction of a game, and proving himself on more than one occasion a particularly poor judge of a declaration. His role in the dropping of Kapil Dev for the Calcutta Test against England in 1984–85 (for “disciplinary” reasons) and his tactics in grinding that match down to one of the most meaningless draws in Test history, led me to attack his captaincy in a cover story for The Illustrated Weekly of India that winter. The Weekly unfortunately emblazoned their cover with the dramatic query “Is Sunil Gavaskar one of the worst captains India has ever had?” which was a bit over the top. My main point was that as a captain obsessed with drawing matches, and as one who rewarded restraint but punished adventurousness, Gavaskar had shown a profound contempt for the paying public for whom, after all, the game was being played. I added, somewhat unnecessarily, “In the words of a perceptive English critic, Gavaskar has done more than any other person to kill [Test] cricket as a spectator sport in India.” With hindsight, the criticism — however perceptive the now-forgotten English critic might have been — seems absurdly overstated, though it is no accident that Gavaskar holds the world record for draws, too (no captain has drawn as many Tests [thirty] as he has)! Within a month of my article, Gavaskar led India to victory in the World Championship of Cricket in Australia — and resigned the captaincy.
One journalist told me that my Weekly piece had been a major factor in Gavaskar's desire to quit. I did not believe it, because it was typical of Gavaskar to leave on a high note, with the “World Championship” a symbolic raised finger to his critics. Years later I met Gavaskar socially and was horrified to discover that not only had he read the piece, it still rankled with him. So if that article did hurt the Little Master, this essay is a humble attempt to make amends.
For all his flaws put together do not stack up very high against the immensity of Sunil Gavaskar's contributions to Indian cricket — and more, to India itself. He gave us a self-belief that had been lacking before. He brought in a conscientious professionalism, including on issues of fair monetary reward, that transformed the nature of the sport in India. He gave millions of fans a reason to hope that, with Gavaskar at the helm, nothing was impossible. And if there had been moments of pettiness in his captaincy, the greatness of the man was nowhere made more apparent than off the cricket field, after his retirement — above all in the courage with which he intervened personally during the tragic Bombay riots of 1993 to save a Muslim driver from sectarian assault in his neighborhood.