Re-evaluating Gavaskar, the one-day batsman

No one talks about Sunil Gavaskar's one day international career, and the one innings that does get spoken about casts him in horribly unflattering light. That 36 not out has come to define his one-day career, which I think is unfortunate. By no means was his limited-overs career a progression of stodgy knocks that drove everyone insane.

His numbers, certainly, were no worse than most opening batsmen of his era. He even scored his runs at pretty much the same strike rate as Gordon Greenidge or Desmond Haynes, as these figures would suggest (strike rates of batsmen with a minimum of 25 innings as opener up to 31 December 1989, for innings played at the top of the order).

Which is not to say he was a great one-day batsman. He wasn't. He scored too few hundreds for a start. And he did terribly in the '83 World Cup. But it's unfair to call the 36 not out his defining knock.

So what is Gavaskar's defining one day innings? I've picked two, both of which came in matches that shook Indian cricket. Both times, he was dismissed in the 90s.

The first was at Berbice in 1983, three months before the World Cup win. Gavaskar made 90 against a pace attack containing Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Winston Davis and Malcolm Marshall, and from the platform he, Ravi Shastri and Mohinder Amarnath built, Kapil Dev exploded quite frighteningly to score 72 from 38 balls. India won by 27 runs, and West Indies had been beaten for the first time in a home one day international, portentously by the side that would knock them off their world champion perch.

Three years later, at Sharjah, Gavaskar made 92, out of an Indian total of 245 for seven. The fall of wickets column in the Cricinfo scorecard doesn't mention which over the wickets fell in, so I can't say how long was left when the second wicket fell at 216, but surely India should have finished with a bigger total. Gavaskar, seventh out at 245, clearly wasn't able to force the pace late in the innings.

But in the end, 245 nearly proved enough.

Now, while Javed Miandad's last-ball six has few parallels in limited-overs cricket for drama, I haven't quite understood how this match, the final of a relatively unimportant tournament, has resonated so much among Indian cricket fans, and how there's still so much dissection of Chetan Sharma's last ball. But in any case, this match is seen as the one that changed the equations of India-Pakistan cricket forever.

So coming back to Gavaskar, I see these two as 'defining' innings because they seem to represent his one-day career perfectly. Both times, his efforts were overshadowed, and rightly so, for Kapil's and Miandad's knocks belonged on a different level altogether. A level, perhaps, he wasn't capable of attaining in one-day cricket. But he was present, hovering in the background, a subtle but essential influence.

Three debuts, one highlights package

Three men made their Test debuts at Old Trafford in 1974. This morning, I watched highlights of the third and fourth innings of that Test.

The first of the three to make an appearance on my TV screen was Madan Lal, running in earnestly as he would do throughout his career, attempting in vain to dislodge the feisty John Edrich.

Edrich, unlike his fellow left-hander David Gower, bats beautifully in highlights packages that I happen to watch. On this day he made 100 not out, cutting, pulling and picking off his legs with strong forearms and defiant lower jaw. This being a highlights package, and Madan Lal happening to go wicketless, all I saw of his bowling were military-medium long hops.

Set 296 to win on the final day, India was dismissed for 182, with 15 overs left.

Early in India's innings, Mike Hendrick, England's debutant, took a fantastic low catch, diving to his left from backward short leg to send back, appropriately, Eknath Solkar.

Hendrick then took another, much simpler catch, off the shoulder of Gavaskar's bat. Until Chris Old got one to rear in a distinctly ugly manner at his throat, Gavaskar had looked serene and undislodgeable - his 58 contained a couple of superb cuts, one late and one square, off Derek Underwood, and the best shot I've ever seen him play - Bob Willis bowled a fast, full inswinger on off stump, and Gavaskar waited, his feet perfectly still, until the ball pitched next to his right toe, and directed it just wide of gully for four.

Gundappa Viswanath made 50, an innings that the commentator, as was customary in those days, termed 'a brave little knock'. No one says that anymore. And no one calls a Test cricketer 'the Yorkshire skipper' anymore. 

"That brought a big smile to the face of the Yorkshire skipper," the commentator - I'm not sure who - drawled, after Geoffrey Boycott caught Abid Ali, running towards the boundary from square leg with the ball dropping over his shoulder.

Before that, India's debutants had displayed a frightening level of Test match newbieness in the manner of their dismissals. First up, the massively-moustached Brijesh Patel swished at Old without moving his feet from their initial position in his crooked, exaggeratedly side-on stance - the ungainliest, most restricting stance I've ever seen, especially viewed next to the relaxed compactness of Gavaskar's stance or  the potential energy of Viswanath's crouch, perfectly sprung to uncoil into that square cut of his.

Then, Bob Willis bounced Madan Lal, who turned his head away and flailed his bat at the rapidly-rising delivery in the hope of connecting. He managed that, but fell onto his stumps in a disorganised heap. Even tail-enders today look reasonably assured while facing the short ball - this ball must have scared the wits out of the helmet-less Lal, facing someone as quick as Willis for the first time in his life.

What do debuts reveal of cricketers? For Mike Hendrick, this was a Test pretty much like any in his career - four wickets in the match, precious few runs conceded - topped off by that brilliant catch.

Madan Lal proved a durable, if prosaic, international cricketer with averages of 23 and 40 the wrong way around - his batting and bowling will be forever associated with euphemistic adjectives like hard-working and honest.

For Brijesh Patel, this was the dunking in ice-cold water after domestic cricket's lukewarmness that has shocked so many Indian batsmen. Patel ended his career averaging five runs more per innings than Karnataka teammate Viswanath in first class cricket, but twelve fewer in Tests.