The notorious disciplinarian in the game!!

Everyone, who is an ardent follower of cricket, would certainly feel that the Aussies are the worst in terms of their behaviour and on-field discipline. So, by seeing the title of the post, they would certainly expect to see an article on an Oz player. But, that's not to be.

This post is dedicated to Sunil Gavaskar, who is certainly hailed to be one of the best batsmen in the history of world cricket, if not the best. Even Sachin Tendulkar, according to the old purists, doesn't deserve a better position in the numbers game ahead of Sunny as the greatest batsman from the subcontinent. Cricket is generally termed as gentleman's game and many people say that the Australians are the sole reason for the game's image being tarnished with regard to this comment. But, this argument takes a certain beating when we analyse the career and life of the great Sunny Gavaskar, who hailed from India, considered to be one of the countries where the game is played in the perfectly right spirit. Now, Let's take a plunge into the infamous heroics of the legend.

THE BIGGEST OF THEM ALL:

It was the first ever cricket world cup in the year 1975, the Prudential World Cup held in England. And what a spoiler of a game it was to open the tournament. It was England vs India on the 7th of June, 1975, at the Mecca of Cricket, Lord's Cricket Stadium. It was a fantastic innings of One-day cricket displayed by the English, scoring a mammoth 334 for the loss of 4 wickets in their allotted 60 overs. But, alas! Their Indian counterparts, Gavaskar in particular, made a huge mess of the new concept of ODIs. Chasing the huge target, India gave such a disappointing exhibition of batting that even their own large contingent of supporters were totally frustrated with it. The culprit was Gavaskar himself obviously, who played a snail-paced innings of an unbeaten 36 while carrying the bat throughout the 60 overs, with he himself playing 174 deliveries. India crawled to 132/3 at the end of 60 overs, playing with absolutely no intent. Anyone who had the class of Gavaskar, would not play with such stupidity unless he himself wished to deliberately do so. It was alleged that he did this deliberately to show his resentment against the appointment of Venkatraghavan as the captain.

At the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the 1980-81 Tour Down Under, when skipper Gavaskar was given out by the Australian umpire Rex Whitehead, he ordered his fellow batsman Chetan Chauhan off the field, refusing to continue with the match. Is this a show of sportsmanship against the very people whom you term, are of unsporty nature?

In the third test against England at the Eden Gardens, India adopted such a defensive tactic under Gavaskar, that even a highly mediocre English bowling attack was made to look deadly. The hostile crowd watched patiently as India batted painfully slow to reach 437/7 at the end of 203 overs, playing for over two days. As expected, the match was drawn, but the crowd trouble went out of hand. The local police prompted the Indian team to address the public. When the team entered, Gavaskar was pelted with fruit for making the game so dumb and boring. Though what the crowd did was unwise, he should have accepted responsibility for the stupid way in which the team played the game. Instead, He created a scene and vowed at that time that he would never ever play at the Eden Gardens again after that. And keeping his word, he missed the next fixture at the venue two years later, ending his consecutive streak of 106 test appearances, which was a world record at that point of time.

Thus, our own legend, the great Sunny Gavaskar has been the point of discussion of many an issue on the disciplinary front. But, we can frequently see in the media these days, his accusations and the pointing out of the basic discipline which the Australian cricketers must have. It is also not to be forgotten that he played a double role with the ICC, almost during his entire tenure as an ICC official.