Biography

(born 10 July 1949) is a former cricketer who played during the 1970s and 1980s for Bombay and India. Widely regarded as one of the greatest opening batsmen in cricket history, Gavaskar set world records during his career for the most Test runs and most Test centuries scored by any batsman. He held the record of 34 Test centuries for almost two decades before it was broken by Sachin Tendulkar in December 2005. Gavaskar was widely admired for his technique against fast bowling, with a particularly high average of 65.45 against the West Indies, who possessed a four pronged fast bowling attack regarded as the most vicious in Test history. His captaincy of the Indian team, however, was less successful. The team at one stage went 31 Test matches without a victory. There were incidents like crowd displeasure at Eden Gardens in Calcutta leading to multiple matches being disrupted, in response to the poor performance of the Indian team. Turbulent performances of the team led to multiple exchanges of captaincy between Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, with one of Gavaskars sackings coming just six months before Kapil led India to victory at the 1983 Cricket World Cup.

Growing up in Mumbai, Gavaskar was named Indias Best Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year in 1966. After scoring 246, 222 and 85 in school cricket in his final year of secondary education, before striking a century against the touring London schoolboys. He made his first class debut for Vazir Sultan Colts XI against an XI from Dungarpur, in 1966 67, but remained in Bombays Ranji Trophy squad for two further years without playing a match. He made his debut in the 1968 69 season against Karnataka, but made a duck and was the subject of derisive claims that his selection was due to the presence of his uncle Madhav Mantri, a former Indian Test wicketkeeper on Bombays selection committee. He responded with 114 against Rajasthan in his second match, and two further consecutive centuries saw him selected in the 1970 71 Indian team to tour the West Indies. He is the first batsman to score 10,000 runs. Gavaskar was captain of the Indian team on several occasions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, although his record is less than impressive. Often equipped with unpenetrative bowling attacks he tended to use conservative tactics which resulted in a large number of draws. During his tenure Kapil Dev emerged as a leading pace bowler for the country. He captained India to nine victories and eight losses, but most of the games were drawn, 30.