Sunil Gavaskar

Sunil Gavaskar

Sunil Manohar "Sunny" Gavaskar Marathi सुनिल गावसकर pronunciation (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 Gavaskar's sackings coming just six months before Kapil led India to victory at the 1983 Cricket World Cup.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) named Sunil Gavaskar as the recipient of the Col CK Nayudu Lifetime Achievement Award for Cricket in India in 2012. Gavaskar will receive the trophy, a citation and a cheque for Rs 25 lakh at the BCCI awards function.