There is a saying,” Slow and steady wins the race”. Maybe, but not always. Sometimes it can make a world record also. Talking of world records, Sunil Gavaskar “angry man from Mumbai” named too many records for himself. He was the first batsman to reach 10,000 runs in Test cricket. He broke the highest number of century record of Great Don Bradman. His consistency against top-class bowlers was a phenomenon.
But he named a very weird record for himself in ODI cricket. it was the time when the first men’s World Cup was being played in England and it was quite a moment. The World saw a new era of cricket. This match was played between England and India at lord’s in 1975. it was a 60-overs match then. England won the toss and elected to bat first. Since it was a time when India was dependent mainly on spin bowling, England’s batsman played some aggressive innings. DL Amiss scored a brilliant century. England posted a humongous 333 runs on the board. Almost 6 runs per over. Around 45 years ago.
The Indian team must have been clueless seeing such a big target. Anyway, the chase started. Sunil Gavaskar came to open the bat along with ED Solkar. In the first over, Gavaskar edged but neither the wicket-keeper nor bowler appealed, and from there he never gave a second chance to English bowlers. He batted for a complete 60 overs. India lost only three wickets but even after such a long stay of a major batsman, and losing only three wickets. India lost the match by a big margin of 202 runs. At the end of 60 overs, there was only 132 runs on the board.
Now that was a complete shocker. Never before anyone had seen anything like that. After batting for a complete 60 overs, Gavaskar scored only 36 runs total. Gavaskar played a test inning in the opening match of the ODI World Cup, 1975. No one was ready to believe what happened.
Now there are many gossips around this strange innings. Some say it was intentional as everything was not going well in the team and Gavaskar so did this on purpose. Many stories ran but every story has Sunil Gavaskar as the villain. And that was not totally wrong. He was one of the most dependable and skilled batsmen of his team.
Now, when we look at the batting scorecard, it looks even more strange. A total of five batsmen played, out of which, Anshumaan Gaekwad and GudappaVishwanaath batted with the strike rate of 47.82 and 62.74 respectively. The other two batsman ED Solkar and BP Patel batted with the strike rate of 23.52 and 28.07. but in the end, only Gavaskar was named as the culprit while another batsman also batted in something similar fashion. May be because he played almost half of the total inning, from the first ball to the last.
Well, one thing was sure, India never batted to win the match. The attitude of Gavaskar was questioned when the team manager blamed him for being completely irresponsible. The manager freaked out badly. Well another story says that Sunil Gavaskar never shared a healthy relation with team management regarding match fee issues. According to one of the team members Karshan Ghavri, many messages were sent to Gavaskar during his inning but he was completely ignorant. Target was too big to be chased so he focused on batting practice. Hilarious, isn’t it? Batting practice in a World Cup match when thousands of spectators are sitting, watching the match, sounds completely insane by the way. But that’s what his teammates gave in this inning.
According to local newspapers in England, Indian fans were totally dejected. A cricket fan will love to lose a match fighting rather than enjoying some batting practice. It was not 45 minutes or one hour but a whole 60 overs, more than four hours. But as said earlier, there were many stories. According to one, Gavaskar was not pleased with captain Srinivas Venkatraghvan and team selectors for overreliance on spinners on the green tracks of lords. Gavaskar was expecting some fast bowlers in the team but selectors did not buy it. it’s true that spinners failed badly in stopping runs.
Years later in an interview, words of Sunil Gavaskar himself was, “Why the hell did I not walk on the second ball”?Gavaskar himself never talked about this incident openly even though he has covered many international matches as a fine commentator. But this incident is something which he can never forget neither his fan, the one tortoise of the inning. He played some innings which established him as the run-machie later. One was the record chase in test cricket when India chased down a target of 403 in the fourth inning of the test against the mightiest bowling attack of the era, West Indies. But in the end, does not matter, how good you are, such records can never be overwritten with any ink.