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Comments Sunil Gavaskar - Greatest Opening Batsman
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Sunil Gavaskar is one of the greatest opening batsmen of all times. The former Indian captain had virtually every stroke in the book and preferred solidity before flair for the Indian cricket team.
Sunil Manohar “Sunny” Gavaskar was born on 10 July 1949 in Bombay and proved his skills as a right-hand batsman and right-arm medium pace bowler. Gavaskar made his test debut on 6 March 1971 v West Indies and ODI debut on 13 July 1974 v England. In 125 tests and 108 one-day internationals, Sunil Gavaskar scored 10,122 and 3,092 runs, respectively. His safe catching skills in the slips made him the first Indian (excluding wicket keepers) to take over a hundred catches in Test matches.
Gavaskar was the first to score 10,000 runs and score 34 centuries in the test cricket version; these records were later bettered by Sachin Tendulkar.
In the 1975 World Cup, Gavaskar stunned his own admirers by scoring just 36 (not out) off 174 balls (scoring just one four) in reply to 334 scored by England in 60 years. It was alleged the master batsman deliberately scored poorly after being annoyed with the promotion of Srinivas Venkataraghavan to captaincy. It is believed that Gavaskar was stripped of captaincy due to his proximity with the World Series Cricket when India toured England in 1979 for a four Test tour. However, his cricket skills were always recognized and the cricketer was an important part of the Cricket World Cup 1983 winning squad, led by Kapil Dev.
Tags : Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Kapil Dev, Srinivas Venkataraghavan

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