When Sunil Gavaskar advised Sachin Tendulkar to not let Wasim Akram put his arm around him

It was an evening in which the ‘Little Master’ Sunil Gavaskar and ‘Master Blaster’ Sachin Tendulkar regaled the select audience with cricketing anecdotes. It was also a reunion of sorts for some of the Indian cricketing greats, largely former captains from Mumbai and also former Test players.

There were several generation India cricketers, captain Nari Contractor, his predecessor in the Indian team in the 1950s, Madhav Apte, his juniors and captain Ajit Wadekar among others. The most notable being Tendulkar under the same roof as his childhood friend and team-mate Vinod Kambli, burying their differences of the past, and the 200-Test veteran sharing some jokes with his captain Mohammad Azharuddin and even sharing the stage with the scorer of three Test centuries in his first three matches from Hyderabad.

The occasion was the launch of journalist Rajdeep Sardesai’s book ‘Democracy’s XI – The Great Indian Cricket Story’ on Monday evening. Cricket stories of the past, some heard of in various other platforms and some unheard of before, were greatly consumed by the audience with the author himself narrating stories of his famous cricketing father Dilip Sardesai and his team-mates including Salim Durani.

The chat on cricket and its glorious stories that went for a little more than an hour was keenly cherished as much as the laughs that Tendulkar and Azhar shared or Kambli and Azhar recounting their playing days’ pranks on their team-mates and doing a ‘high-five’ while bursting into laughter.

There were some serious cricketing lessons from the legendary Gavaskar, when he said about learning by just observing his seniors in the Indian dressing room the minute details that went a long way in his career. Gavaskar, who made his international debut in 1971 in the West Indies, said that the Indian players were “overawed by Sir Garfield Sobers and Rohan Kanhai” in his first trip.

“You kept looking at then even in the nets what Sobers and Kahnai were doing, and not looking at your nets in the adjacent side. Being in the presence of these guys was something special. But, when it came to match time, it was completely different. When Ajit (Wadekar, the captain), walked out to toss with Sobers, I noticed the little things like the confidence with which he walked, the easy conversations they had. Watching these little things was such an important thing for me," said Gavaskar.

While India and Pakistan cricketers may be good friends off the field, Gavaskar recalled having said to Tendulkar once, “If you are walking out to toss with Wasim Akram, do not let Akram put his arm around you. It is pretty much patronising kind of a way, which sometimes they tend to do.”

Speaking of captains, Gavaskar, who himself led India in 47 Tests and 38 ODIs including the World Championship of Cricket in Australia in 1985, has always spoken highly at every opportunity of the 1983 World Cup winning skipper, Kapil Dev.

Monday was no different. Gavaskar said: “Kapil made everybody believe they can play for India and captain India. Before that, there was one ‘naam ke vaaste’ player from non-metros as a part of the touring side. Kapil was flamboyant cricketer who got the crowds in.”

Indian cricket brought players from all religions, caste and languages. The only one thing that was common was the passion for the game. Gavaskar spoke about the bonding the players had. “Can’t imaging thinking of a player as anything other than a cricketer. It never occurred to us that he was a Maharashtrian or a South Indian. All that mattered was how good he was and how he could make our team win,” Gavaskar said. Tendulkar added: “There was no caste, creed, religion in cricket. We all had one goal, and that was to win.”

In today’s world of advanced technology, cricket coaching is imparted through the I-phones and computers and what not! Rahul Dravid had spoken of being coached through television sets in the mofussils and districts, watching the India cricketers bat and learning from them

In the pre-television days, Gavaskar said that coaching was largely through word of mouth and by observation.  He said: “There was coaching but the most important aspect was the temperament is what separates men from the boys. The bonding between players happened during train travel for matches when players played cards but they also spoke cricket, which for us sitting and observing from the upper tier was important.

“During the Moin-ud-Dowla Cup before I played for India, I remember sitting with Nari Contractor in his room. Naribhai would tell us stories about fast bowling, what it required. I asked him about being hit in the ribs by (England fast bowler) Brian Statham in 1959. He had broken ribs, still he went on to score 81 at Lord’s. That, for me, was important. He said ‘You take the blow, but stick around. This is the opportunity, don’t leave it’.

“He would say, ‘Anytime you do well, write it down in the diary, what you did in the morning till what happened in the evening, because when you are going through a bad patch, you turn to these pages when you scored a hundred, how you walked down to bat, with which hand you held the bat, which guard you took. Write down as many detail as you remember and they will help’.”

No wonder that with these learnings from the seniors and the advice followed, Gavaskar went on to score 10,122 runs in 125 Tests, smashing 34 centuries including 13 against the fearsome West Indies pace battery and held the batting records before they were surpassed by Tendulkar.

It was truly an evening to cherish for long.