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South Asian Heritage Month: Sunil Gavaskar
South Asian Heritage Month runs from July 18th to August 17th each year.
SAHM seeks to commemorate, mark and celebrate South Asian cultures, histories, and communities and seeks to understand the diverse heritage and cultures that continue to link the UK with South Asia.
To mark the occasion, we will be posting articles which look back at players and matches that link Somerset with South Asia.
In the first of the series, we focus on India’s Sunil Gavaskar.
Regarded by many as one of the best batters of all time, Sunil Gavaskar will certainly go down in history as one of the game’s greats.
His international career spanned 16 years and during that time, he captained his country, won a World Cup and scored in excess of 13,000 international runs.
He also represented Somerset County Cricket Club.
We will look at his year in Taunton shortly, but before we do that let’s just take a few moments to look back at the career of one of the very best.
Sunil Gavaskar was born on July 10th 1949 in Bombay (now Mumbai). A prolific run scorer throughout his youth, Gavaskar was called into the India Test squad for the first time as a 21-year-old for the 1971 series in the West Indies.
He missed the first Test due to a tooth infection, but was named in the starting XI for the second Test at Port of Spain and made an immediate impact. He made 65 in his first international innings and followed that up with 67 not out in his second as India cruised to a seven-wicket win.
His first century for his country came in the next Test in Georgetown. He made 116 in the first innings and 64 not out in the second innings. He didn’t have to wait long for his second hundred. That came in the next match when he posted 117 not out.
Not content with this astonishing start to his international career, he made a century in the first innings of the fifth and final Test before claiming a double century in the second innings as India won the series. Gavaskar topped the run charts with 774 runs from eight innings at an average of 154.80 and became the first and only Indian to score a century and a double century in the same match.
Anticipation was high when India arrived in England in 1971, but Gavaskar struggled, making just 144 runs at an average of 24 in the three-Test series.
A first home series against England the following winter also saw the young opener unable to repeat the form he showed in the West Indies and the pressure was beginning to mount. There were glimpses of his class but some were starting to doubt whether he would live up to his early potential.
He captained his country for the first time in New Zealand in 1976 as a stand-in for the injured Bishen Singh Bedi. The added responsibility seemed to spur Gavaskar on and he made a century in the first innings as India won the opening Test by eight wickets. He scored 266 runs in the series at an average of 66 and the doubters were soon to be silenced permanently.
When India reached the West Indies later that year Gavaskar was back to his best as 390 runs flowed at an average of 56. His first century on home soil came in 1976 and the runs just kept coming.
In 1978 he became the first Indian to score two centuries in a Test match on two occasions after achieving the feat again against Pakistan, and in doing so became India’s leading run scorer in Tests. The three-match series saw him amass 447 runs at an incredible average of 89.4. He was named Test Captain ahead of the series against the West Indies later that year.
As the summer of 1980 rolled around, Somerset were looking for overseas players to cover for the absence of Viv Richards and Joel Garner who had commitments with the West Indies, and Somerset were looking to replace quality with quality.
And so it was that Gavaskar arrived in Taunton.
Gavaskar made his debut in the fourth game of the season, a home clash with Gloucestershire, and made 75 in a match that saw him rather upstaged by Ian Botham who scored a memorable 228. Next up were Surrey at the Oval where Somerset’s new opener helped himself to 138.
Unfortunately, the summer of 1980 was one of the wettest on record and the Indian superstar struggled to adapt to the slow and low wickets which were so different to those he was used to.
Whilst his year with the Club was not the run-fest that both Gavaskar and the Somerset faithful were hoping for, there were certainly glimpses of his quality.
His 15 First Class matches yielded 686 runs with an average of 34.3 with a best of 155 not out. He also featured in 16 List A matches for the County, scoring 502 runs at an average 33.46 with a best of 123.
Although Somerset didn’t quite see the very best of him, Sunil Gavaskar is undoubtedly one of the best the game has ever seen.
He brought the curtain down on his international career in 1987 leaving behind an incredible record. In 125 Tests he scored 10,122 runs at an average of 51.12 with a high score of 236 not out. He scored 34 Test centuries and 45 Test half centuries as well as taking over 100 catches.
His 108 ODIs saw him accumulate 3092 runs at 35.13 with a best of 103 not out.
He was the first player to make more than 10,000 Test runs and his 34 Test hundreds was a record which stood until 2005 when it was broken by his compatriot Sachin Tendulkar.
He was the first cricketer to play in 100 consecutive Tests, was the first Indian non-wicketkeeper to take over 100 Test catches and was part of India’s World Cup winning side of 1983.
In total he scored 81 First Class hundreds, a record which stood until 2013 when it was again beaten by Tendulkar.
In 1980 he was named as one of Wisden’s Cricketers of the Year and that was also the year that he received his Somerset County Cap.
