Happy birthday Sunil Gavaskar: Recalling the memories of the perfect straight drive

Childhood is an innocent period of one’s life. Whoever tells you that it is the best, because you don’t have any worries, is telling you a lie. There were just so many bloody worries. Like I have not completed the homework given by drawing teacher; how do I attend school? What do I do if the teacher asks me to speak in front of the whole school? Like today mother has made some god-awful gawar ka sabji, how can I avoid dinner tonight? But the biggest worry in my childhood used to be how will Indian cricket survive after this guy Sunil Gavaskar retires?

I swear this bothered me a lot. Really a lot. Ours was a humble household. No television, not even a radio set. Television was a rarity in the 80s and before 1984, everyone had a black and white television – not everyone, but for those who had a television set, it was black and white. There were just two television sets in my neighbourhood and I didn’t know these owners. But I had heard so much of this phenomenon called Gavaskar that I had to watch him play anyhow. Buying a ticket and watching him live …read more